His extraordinary new ability to see and understand everything happening around him had now extended past the boundaries of Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan to the entire City of New York. Agony and ecstasy, crime and punishment, greed and poverty, depravity and passion––all of it happening at that instant, in different locations all over the city. Then he realized he could see something more: not just the three-dimensional images his brain normally presented, but a whole extra dimension. He couldn’t have explained why, but he just knew the additional layer was energy—the energy within everyone and everything and which passed unceasingly between everyone and everything. Every human action was an energy transfer that rippled out into intricate patterns and intertwined, or caused a reaction with other energy. This principle applied to everything from the sound of words being spoken to the beat of a moth’s wings, to the flight of a bullet. He watched with a childlike sense of wonder and clear-eyed vision as a hidden sub-structure of the world mapped itself out before him. It was as beautiful in its complexity as it was awe-inspiring.
Then, as if a veil had been suddenly lifted, he saw the energy for what it was: a conduit of information about people’s hopes, fears, ambitions, intentions, but also about the likely extent of their lifespan and their predisposition to good or evil. It was the energy that flowed in the form of actions that carried the most significant information: it carried consequences—the consequences of every human decision and subsequent activity, small or large, consequences that could affect the few or the many, that could span short distances or whole cities and continents. Each consequence provoked further actions, which carried their own repercussions, creating a seemingly infinite, expanding network.
John feared for his sanity, and that his mind would literally explode with the onslaught of so many millions of pieces of information. He then started to notice that out of all the disembodied conversations he could tune into, a small but increasing number of voices were speaking directly to him. So gradually had they appeared that they neither shocked nor frightened him, but their persistent message started to needle him. They exhorted him to join them in the afterlife and thereby keep the new powers he was experiencing. The voices grew louder now, assailing him on all sides, drilling into him as if trying to bury their message deep within him.
Desperate to make sense of what was happening, John found himself clinging to an explanation he had once read about but found ridiculous, however much he wanted to believe in it: what he was going through seemed to be a near-death-experience. By definition, that meant he was nearly dying but not dying, caught in some kind of limbo, not moving on to any sort of afterlife and yet not returning to the life he had before.
Whatever this was, he still had his own will, and it was resisting the messages goading him to move on to the afterlife. The fear he had felt before was now giving way to anger. How could he accept the injustice of his time on Earth being cut short? Or that he’d never experience a full life, never know if Jennifer might have been the one to share it with?
Like the onslaught of water after the opening of the floodgates of a dam, the information now poured in with even more force, and with it, a message willing him to accept his destiny. The latter grew ever stronger and the pressure became intense but, despite that, his anger surged in one last attempt to obliterate everything trying to compete for his attention. For a moment, he feared his mind would blow. Nothing could withstand this pressure––it seemed inevitable. Then, just as he was waiting for the tipping point to be reached, it all stopped, suddenly, like a kiddie ride needing another quarter.
A sudden void, and then, a second later, he was back in the OR, looking at his detached body lying prostrate on the operating table. His reassuringly restricted view of the world had returned. He reveled in the release, but it was short-lived. Whatever was happening to him was not yet over.
John noticed that the lead surgeon had gone, leaving her team to close up his body. As he watched them counting out the instruments and the blood-soaked swabs, presumably to ensure none had been left inside him, he realized he had no idea if the operation had been a success. He had missed the surgeon’s assessment and final prognosis. He had missed it because of the incredible thing that had just happened to him.
He was still separate from his body. Did that mean whatever subsequent surgery had occurred wasn’t a success? His body was still connected to a ventilator, but the heartbeat monitor was pinging with what seemed like a normal beat. He figured he would rejoin his body at the point when he regained consciousness. It sounded reasonable. But what if he didn’t regain consciousness? What if his body
