The Day I Fooled Death – Part 6

Consciousness slowly came back to Richard. He was stretched on a gurney and a worried looking nurse was taking his pulse. When she noticed that he was awakening, her face broke out in a wide grin. In a sympathetic voice, she said: “There you are, you had us worried when you arrived unexpectedly. You are lucky to have survived an unscheduled transfer.”

Richard was puzzled by what she had said. He could not think of anything more brilliant then to say: “Where am I?”.

“You are in the recovery room near Mr. Thanatos’s office. Where else did you think you would be, after your death?”

“But…, I am not dead….”

“That is only a technicality, once you are here you are considered dead. The fact that you are not, displeased Mr. Thanatos very much. He has standards to maintain and you have broken his perfect record. He will want to meet you as soon as you are recovered enough.”

Not knowing what else to say, Richard answered: “I think that I am feeling as fine as I will ever do for that meeting.” He slowly sat on the edge of the gurney, while letting out a long sigh.

The nurse flashed him a wide smile, and said: “Don’t worry Mr. Thanatos is an understanding man. If you willingly submit to have your mind selectively erased, he will forgive you.”

With that the nurse winked at him and started toward the door. As she reached it, she turned suddenly and said: “Mr. Thanatos’s assistant will come to fetch you in a moment. Bye….” She opened the door and briskly walked out.

Richard tried to figure out where he was, but his mind did not seem work properly. Adding to the confusion was the fear brought on by the words of the nurse. He definitively did not want to have his mind worked on in any way. While he was ruminating, a young, severe looking man dressed in a business suit, walked in the room. He gave Richard a disdainful look. In a haughty, high pitched, voice he said: “Mr. Thanatos will see you now. Please follow me.”

As Richard stood up, the young man did not seem to appreciate his rumpled look. He turned from him with a scornful snort, and led him out of the room. Richard walked out into a plush carpeted corridor. He was lead to a nearby, darkly polished oak door. The young man knocked once and walked in. Richard hesitantly followed. The richly but severely decorated, paneled room, housed an imposing desk of darkly stained ash. Behind that desk sat a jovial looking man with a round face and eyes full of mirth. His balding head was ringed by a halo of bristly grey hair. When he noticed that Richard had entered the room he stood up and extended his hand in greeting. Richard saw that he stood less than 5 feet tall. As the man was looking at him with piercing eyes, Richard took the offered hand and was surprised by its crushing grip. When he finally let go, the man pointed to the chair facing his desk. He said: “Please have a seat, we have a lot to discuss”, turning toward his assistant, his eyes lost some of their joy, he continued “You can leave now, Mr. Gregg. I can handle this myself.” His eyes did not leave the young man as he departed in a huff. When his eyes returned to Richard they softened a bit.

Richard was surprised by the warm welcome, it did not match the dread that filled his mind. He had a feeling that under this warm exterior, his mind was ice cold. The man’s attention was riveted on Richard. A long silence stretched into eternity, as Richard felt all of his life and soul exposed to the man’s piercing gaze. A frown creased Mr. Thanatos’s forehead. He looked directly into Richard’s eyes and asked: “Do you know that you are not dead, and not supposed to be here?”

“Ergh…”

“What do you have to answer about this?”

“Ergh…”

Richard’s mind had a difficulty grasping the concept of “Here” and the fact that he was supposed to be dead to be there. Sense this difficulty with his interlocutor, Mr. Thanatos asked rhetorically: “You do not have a clue where you are?”

“Ergh…”

“Let me explain…” He sighed deeply. “…Eons ago, when my predecessors found out that intelligent life was about to evolve on this planet, we decided to study the dynamics of this evolution. We captured a large sample of the local population, and genetically engineered them so that their life energy would become static at the end of their earthly life cycle. As you well know, earthly life is but the first stage of your species life cycle, after its completion there is a long maturing process of your life energy that will eventually lead to a new highly intelligent species on another plane of reality.” Noticing the befuddled look on Richard’s face, he inquired: “You do know about this, do you?”

“Ergh…”

“O my dear man, I had no idea. This must be quite a shock to you. Do you want me to go on?”

Richard shook his head in an effort to garner his thoughts. This was almost too much for him to absorb but his programmer’s mind needed the information once it was open to new concepts. He struggled to say: “Please do so, I need to know more.”

With a look of concern Mr Thanatos continued :”Do not be afraid to interrupt if you need further enlightenment.” He paused for a few seconds, to be sure that Richard was following him, then continued. “Your species is within a few centuries of reaching a new phase of evolution. We are very happy to see its progress. As I had said earlier we created genetically engineered specimens of your race so that we can study them at the transition phase of their life cycle. A stable area of the space-time continuum was created for this purpose.

As you might well imagine, it requires an incredible amount of energy to maintain such a bubble in the continuum. Also, this bubble has to be of a finite size and be able to accommodate only a specific number of individuals, plus the research and support personal. Since we are dealing with a limited number of test subjects, and that we have no wish to acquire new ones at this late a stage in your evolution, we send the test subjects back to earth after a rigorous debriefing and a period of deprogramming. They start a new life unbeknownst to their new parents. In this way, we have been able to maintain our test facility to its optimum size. Any variation of this size, no matter how small, could create havoc with its stability. Which in turn could form a rip in the bubble that could destroy our subject of study, the Earth.” He pause for a sobering moment.

“This brings us to your presence here. You are not a test subject, and by definition should not be able to be present in this bubble. The other problem is that you are still alive in your larval form, and we cannot bring ourselves to eliminate you. This would be against our code of ethics. We do not know if your life energy would be able to escape from the confines of the bubble.

Do not let this bother you, the research committee will have a meeting later on today to discuss your case. In any way we will meet again tomorrow. In the mean time, if you have any questions, I will assign to you a research assistant to answer all that we can. Have a nice day.”

With this, Mr. Thanatos stood up and shook his hand. Before he had time to form a reply in his mind, Richard was ushered out of the office by the efficient Mr. Gregg. He had not noticed his return, because he was so engrossed by Mr. Thanatos’s monologue.

Richard was escorted through a labyrinth of corridors, to a nicely appointed room. He let himself fall onto a comfort¬able couch, as his mind considered the implications of what he had heard.

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From 7/2006: The Day I Fooled Death

The Sass