Author Note: This is actually an under-1200-word abridged version of Conversation (nearly 2700 words), which I published here the other day.
You walk down a brightly lit hallway of a hospital to visit your mother, who is dying from terminal ovarian cancer. Upon reaching her room, you feel a slight change in the air - a few degrees cooler than the hall, and the faint scent of lunch from an hour ago. You shut the door behind you and see her lying in bed watching the ceiling-mounted television. Despite the feeble light of the overcast sky coming through the large windows, you can see that she looks less jaundiced than yesterday, and her eyes have regained some of the sparkle that had been taken away by the chemo.
As you settle back into the recliner, your mother picks up the remote, switches the tv off, and changes her expression to one reserved for matters of the utmost seriousness, “Haven’t seen that look in a while,” you say.
She shifts closer to the mattress edge and whispers, “Last night, from 1:02 until 1:04, I was clinically dead.”
You feel alarm draining the blood from your face and causing your eyelids to open wide. A smile of empathy and a light squeeze of your mother’s hand help bring the rising panic under control. Seeing this, she continues, “While I was gone, I learned what reality really is.”
You blink.
"What?" you ask in a flat voice.
***
She was expecting this reaction, “Pull out one of your credit cards. Doesn’t matter which one.”
You fish your wallet from your pants pocket, and pull out a Visa card.
"See that hologram in the corner?” she asks
Your eyes flick to the square of shimmering rainbow colors stamped into the bottom corner - the three-dimensional shape of an eagle in flight. “The universe we live in is just like that eagle. An illusion.”
How am I supposed to respond to that? You wonder while replacing the card in the wallet.
“I know, honey. I wouldn’t know what to say myself. But you also know I’d never lie to you.”
“How?” you ask, finding she’s cupped your hand between both of hers. But then again, her hands always were cold. Cold hands, warm heart, indeed, you muse.
“How what, honey?”
“How did you...you know - know?”
She ponders her answer, “When my soul left my body, it was no longer held back by the limitations of my senses. I instantly knew I was experiencing our reality as it truly is - and it’s because of those limitations that I’m not capable of even describing reality to you - not beyond the crude analogy with the credit card anyway.”
"As I understand it, our three-dimensional ‘reality’ is basically nothing more than a complicated movie that's being projected onto a flat two-dimensional surface. Just when I was about to learn what that surface is and why it - the universe we thought we knew and love – exists, I was brought back to life."
***
You are momentarily distracted by the first warming shafts of sunlight to appear in days breaking through the window, causing the atmosphere in the room to shift again - from a nondescript, melancholy slate, tinged with unseen anxiety into a divinely tranquil gold, imbued with the promise of revelation.
Your mom glances at the wall clock, “Katy will be giving me my afternoon pills in a few minutes. They always make me sleepy, and there are a few things I still need to tell you.”
“Our ancestors created religion to cope with not knowing what lies beyond ‘death’. But out of all the people who have ever lived, only a handful have spoken openly of what I’m about to tell you. The earliest were executed as heretics, then eventually labeled as crackpots and ostracized from the communities they lived in.”
“What many people have come to believe in is that when you die, you are judged by a deity for your actions in this life. But what I learned during my journey is that our actions in life are not being judged for reward or punishment, but are literally being collected for a task much larger and more important than the actions of any single human being. The information about the actions of our species as a whole is what is being collected. The ultimate purpose of this task is anybody’s guess. I was actually on the verge of finding that out before my soul was slammed back into my body.
“The last thing I learned before I returned is that even ‘death’ itself is an illusion - that the actual physical universe that our simulated universe is modeled after begins beyond the plane in which our souls exist. What people call 'ghosts' are like what remains of a file in a computer after it's been deleted - some level of information about that file will linger in the hard drive until you reformat it.”
"Do you remember the day we played hooky back when you were just starting high
school and I took you to see Purple Rose of Cairo?" mom asks.
You vaguely recall that day, mostly because it was rainfall that had broken a 30 year record and knocked the power out. So, instead of sitting around in a dark house, you and mom hopped in the car and went to the movies to sit in a dark theater, "Was that the Woody Allen flick? Jeff Daniels steps off a movie screen --"
Everything your mother has been telling you clicks into place and you feel your eyebrows lifting and your mouth falling open, again. You slowly raise your eyes and look at your mother, hands in her lap, her nod barely perceptible.
“So, for all we know,” you gesture to the room, “this is Purple Rose of Cairo 2?” You ask, incredulous.
She pauses for a moment, “In a way...yes. I do know there’s a greater purpose behind it.”
A soft knock before the door opens to admit a nurse, carrying your mom’s pills in a pleated paper cup, “Hey there, sweetness. Time for your afternoon nap.” before bustling back to the nurse’s station.
Your mom lowers the head of the bed then turns on her side to face you. Again, she reaches for your hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, “I’m sure you have a thousand questions, but I’ll be out like a light in two minutes You bend down and kiss her gently on the side of her forehead and whisper that you love her too,
She smiles and closes her eyes.
You walk out to the hall and shut the door behind you, this time it makes no sound. You grin at this and make your way to the elevators, pushing the down button. The elevator doors directly in front of you slide open, the motion sensor clicking as you step in. You press the button to the lobby, and as the doors are shutting you’re not quite sure if you’re actually hearing or simply imagining the faint beeping of alarms in the direction you’ve just come from.