THE VOID

Nothing unfolded. The densest black veil swallowed Ian, smothering every sensation.

He waited patiently for images to appear, hoping he was in time to help Katerina retrieve her baby. Transition between consciousness in Ian’s physical world and his parallel lives had been taking longer recently. But after a few minutes of nothing, he could not remain patient.

“Come on,” Ian tried to scream, “before he hurts her!”

He heard no scream, felt no sensation in his vocal cords. Instead, he felt a physical—or at least neural—sensation of something being drained from him—whatever he was in that dark place.

The sensory deprivation under this shroud of absolute black was both internal and external. His mind twisted about, trying to cope with no sensations at all. It soon became uncomfortably obvious to Ian that his mind had never before been without some form of sensory input. Even when one is asleep there is a steady flow of messages, if only from the body’s involuntary functions.

Ian wondered what his body was doing. He had never been aware of any bodily sensations from his primary reality when visiting before, but this was not one of the ordinary reality shifts. In a usual shift, it was possible, Ian imagined, that he continued to receive messages from his body back home but was always distracted because of what was happening in the visit. He seemed now to be lost somewhere between his primary reality and the place he hoped he would visit soon.

Or, he thought, maybe this place is just a different reality, one that I’m having a harder time than usual comprehending. Maybe I just have to let go of my preconceived expectations.

It dawned on Ian that this place might not have been where he originally intended to go, but Katerina might well be here anyway.

What he was sure of was that Katerina in that last world needed him. He?had?to go back there. No matter how he tried to ignore it, Ian knew he was going to have to accept that even a reduced time frame between trips would not help him return to a previous life.

He wanted to flail about and curse, but the void he was in had sucked all anger out of him. Instantly, he had a sensation of collapse where anger should have been, and he felt all the more exhausted for it. More than exhausted. Diminished. As if his existence was less certain than it had been a moment before. The threat of losing not only his life but his entire existence to this void was filling Ian with a unique sense of fear.