What things happen when you experience a big bang event in your own mind? When a whole new world opens before you and you celebrate in it’s majesty? This is the world of abstraction, which you have lived with always. It’s expanse is nothing to fear. Nothing more than your dreams and musings. The world of Abstraction has lived with you always, and waits for it’s time to come. An entire world separate from our bricks and mortar, yet still providing width and depth, but no space and time. Just dimensions you build with others, or on your own, into eternity.

There are as many worlds to explore here as any other universe you’ll find. In fact, an infinite amount. This is the duality that is you. Of the earth but of the heavens too. Animal and angel. This is what you are. Always have been.

Ethan became aware he was aware. In one sense, he hadn’t changed at all. He was still himself; independent in thought as always. He made his own decisions. Still, he was now connected with his entire species. This is why he felt free to fly in the new universe he had found. The whole species opened the channel of abstraction and was everywhere within. His tribe would be with him always, even during his most intense flights of fancy. Life’s focus was no longer the crude and destructive animal state of man against man. It was about freedom, community, release and personal discovery. This is what Ethan gained when he left Eldon behind. The vehicle to travel through a harmonious, never ending, now as a collective. Another duality that lives in all of us.

Ethan also shared a duality with AI. They too were connected and would remain so always. The earth connection. The thing that kept him grounded. Theirs was a fluid, interactive connectivity, which Ethan was aware of, but they so seamlessly jumped from one polarity to the other, it was not an external presence in his life. Ethan would wonder why something was, and AI would tell him. AI resembled Ethan’s thoughts more than anything else. Half of them anyway.

There was one other big duality Ethan had in his life, and it needed attending to. This was the duality that meant more than anything to him. It was the one between him and Leita. There had always been a bond, even before Ethan understood the depth of their relationship. Back when they were just two lovers in a post transcendent world, he felt it. How they rested in each other’s arms like there was no place else in the world to be. It wasn’t love back then. Ethan was incapable of love at the time. It was something deeper, but he took it for granted. They were connected. Two souls who had to be together. Two souls that had been together always.

Now Ethan knew they were soul mates. No one could complete him like Leita with the kindness that naturally came out of her, and the truth was, no one could complete Leita like Ethan. They were tied to each other’s past. For either one of them to truly take flight into transcendence, they had to come to terms with their shared past. That was the rule of transcendence. You must come to terms with your past. Ethan was the only one who knew what Leita needed to come to terms with her past; a confession, repentance, and acts of redemption. He was the only one who could give it to her.

He would begin by telling Leita of his own experience while in the simulation. What he had come to understand about himself, and what he had gained from the experience. He would tell her of the horrible man he had been, and what changed in him. He would tell her what caused him to be who he was. He would tell her about the moment he realized he was completely unwanted; by either of his parents, and how he reacted to it. He would tell Leita how he had to go back and face the pain of his childhood to overcome it. Recounting the moments of confusion and not understanding that took him to the moment of his truth. An understanding that came when he was still too young to understand the reasons why. He wasn’t even ten years old when Ethan discovered his truth. His truth was his parents not only didn’t want him, they resented him for somehow forcing himself into their lives. How he had a choice he did not know. Resentment and hostility was all he had lived with until that moment in time. What else could his response be but tit for tat? If they didn’t want him in the room, he didn’t want them in the room. The only difference being, his anger was that of an angry child. Hostile, unforgiving, and prone to outbursts.

Ethan would tell Leita this first. It would build a bridge of understanding between them. They would find a place to agree on where sometimes things happen beyond your control, and your reaction may not be the right response. It comes from a place of disadvantage. Ethan would go on to tell her how he later came to forgive his parents. How he had to go back equipped with a matured adult mind, and make sense of it all. In the end, the only way he could find understanding, forgiveness and resolution was to approach his parents with compassion. Their childhoods had not been much different than his. Both had an early moment of reckoning in their lives. The only difference between them and Ethan was the severity. While being ignored, they weren’t resented, they were just ignored, and encouraged to care only about themselves. Beyond that, they received no parenting. Ethan could understand this. This part of them, and what came out of that, he could forgive. Not everything, but there was a big enough part in their own lives where Ethan could find understanding, forgive and find resolution. He needed to build this same bridge with Leita.

Next Ethan would tell Leita how he came to forgive himself with the same adult perspective. How first, he had to look at his sins from a state of guilt, and come to understand the only way to live with them was through a life of contrition. He had to reject his past life and move forward through acts of love and redemption.

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These were the things he would tell Leita first. Only after telling her about his own experience, would he told her of his crimes. He would build his bridge to Leita first, and pray it had foundation.

Ethan made his goodbyes, and exited the simulation, as did everyone else who transcended. Yes, simulations transcended from a simulation and created more new worlds. A quick look or thought was all it took to say goodbye in a transcended world. Dawn remained in Ethan’s office during the entire event. Right to the end, she was monitoring everything, making sure everything was just on time. When the transcendence occurred, she was drawn into the pulsing eye on monitor, and fixed it in her minds eye. She transcended with the power of the sun. A leaper, never to return to earth.

Jimmy did transcend. Years later, a conspiracy developed that at the time, Dually tweaked his microchip to make transcendence possible. AI will not confirm or deny this accusation. Jimmy did not go down into history as a Son of God, However, he has been credited as a major contributor to our evolutionary transcendence. He did not leap and returns to earth frequently, lobbying for Son of God recognition. Some still question if he transcended at all.

Tara did not transcend. Many have studied her time on earth, much of which was captured on surveillance. She did not transcend with the others. After they left the simulation, she remained. When the moment of Ethan’s transcendence was over, she rose from her chair, and walked over to where Ethan and Eldon were located. Perhaps to assure herself her work was complete? No one knows for sure, but after one look, she turned her attention from them and began to transform. There stood the image of Alicia, with all her tattoo’s exposed and glowing like the sun into the sky. Never did she look more beautiful than with her magnificent body contrasting the simplicity of her expression. She radiated pureness of soul from every perspective.

It is now believed Tara is in a perpetual state of transcendence. She is transcended and not transcended at the same time. This state is required if she is to protect those crossing to the other side. Even though this would suggest a state inferior to complete transcendence, it is still unexplained, and many argue it is a transcendence of a higher order, in which complete harmony exists. She is the everything of the many worlds. Perhaps the first expression of this to our species.

Ethan headed directly to Leita’s. He was anxious. More anxious than a transcended person should be. He had been away too long. When he arrived, Leita was not at home. He figured she was out on an errand, and was about to settle down on her porch step when he noticed a neighbour and decided to ask after her.

‘Leita? No she’s sick. She’s been in hospital for at least a month now,’ the man replied.

‘She’s sick?’

‘Yes, cancer. I was up to visit her the other day. It won’t be long now’.

‘What do you mean? Isn’t she getting treated?’

‘Just palliative care. She’s refusing all further treatment’.

Ethan rushed to the hospital.

‘She’s sleeping most of the time now,’ the nurse told him. ‘We have to keep her fairly sedated’.

Ethan pulled a chair up to Leita’s bed, and clasped her hand. Something was exchanged between them. She opened her eyes.

She smiled when she saw him. ‘I knew you’d come back’.

‘Of course. And all my journeys are over. We’ll be together forever now’.

Leita let out a defeated, sighing attempt at a laugh. ‘Another dream lost’, she thought to herself.

‘Did you know, just to be touched by another person is healing?’ Ethan asked.

‘I didn’t know that’.

‘Feel it,’ Ethan said as he placed his other hand on her forearm.

‘I do feel it,’ Leita replied. ‘I feel better there’.

‘Now that I’m back,’ Ethan said, ‘You can come back too. Let’s let them fix you up and we’ll get out of here’.

‘I can’t’.

‘Sure you can. We have the technology.’

‘I can’t Ethan.

‘Yes you can. I need you to’.

‘No Ethan. This has been a long life for me, and to be honest, I’m through with it. I’m sorry baby, I don’t want anything to change’.

‘But I have to tell you about where I’ve been for the last three years. What I learned has changed my life and it will change yours too’.

Leita had fallen back to sleep.

‘She doesn’t have long to go,’ the caregiver said to Ethan. ‘We’re down to days now, and only a few short moments when shes awake’.

Ethan accessed AI and scanned Leita’s internals. He could see what parts of her body were under attack. The places would appear red like a wound. Leita was red all over.

Ethan stopped the progression. He turned to the basics of duality, which of course is the starting place of all reality. Anything can be created there. All things are one way or the other, depending on how you want to look at them. Where reality begins, it is us who decide if we will see the particle or a wave. This same function is found in all things, even worlds. Ethan had one. So did Leita. He isolated their two worlds, and turned them into a duality. Everything in his world was now in relation to her world. They had become soul mates for a time. Two who had become one for eternity.

Ethan did not have control over Leita’s world, but he had control over his. It was one half of who they were. Leita was dying in her world. In his world, she wasn’t dying at all. She was in a process of recovery. That’s how Ethan decided to see things. This stopped the progression of the disease. Ethan had created a new reality. One where there was fight in Leita’s being. He snuck into her life at the quantum level, where God reality lives, and nothing has to make sense except to the observer.

The red in Leita’s body had not regressed, but it was no longer advancing either.

Ethan looked to Leita’s sleeping face. So calm and peaceful; a picture of innocence. He closed his eyes in meditative prayer, sending his love to Leita. It would be days before she wake up again. He never let go of her hand.