unordinary

edit: I changed the title back to what I originally planned it to be. It was first posted as “Dissociative Engineering.”

Accidental Transcendence

by Shayna Yates

Although the code practically wrote itself, debugging could still take a few days. Alma, hypnotized by the screen, bumped her left hand into an energy drink while her right hand continued to type relentlessly. She managed to grip the can without knocking it over, and sipped it without really noticing the liquid was flat and slightly warm. She placed it back on the desk, creating a new ring slightly off-center from the last one. There was a space on the desk about six inches in diameter that was a tangle of sticky, repetitive circles.

She hadn’t eaten in at least two days, but she had stopped noticing the hunger, or really anything about her physical body. She had a case of energy drinks next to her chair, and was planning to power through this project until it was done. She was sick of looking at it, but there was no way she was going to meet the deadline otherwise.

Her hair was stuck behind her ear like glue. It stank of dried syrup and the snowdrifts of salty dandruff that were trapped under it’s strands. Her old sweatshirt was limp and hung on her like a second layer of baggy skin. She reached for her drink again, pawing the air absentmindedly. She found the can, sipped, and returned it to the desk. The familiar tapping sound of the aluminum on wood was missing, but Alma hadn’t noticed. She was still hacking away at the code.

Alma squinted at the screen, thinking maybe she needed a stronger prescription. The text was getting harder to see. It didn’t change. She straightened her posture and leaned back. Her spine crackled stiffly. The last crack it made was audible and made Alma cringe. She leaned in to continue typing, but the small details on the monitor were still blurred. The text was impossible to make out.

She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her eyelids, scraping off the crud that built up from not blinking. The text was still fuzzy when she looked again. She hit ctrl+s, deciding it was a monitor malfunction and she could retrieve the file later. When she leaned back, she noticed the fuzziness spreading outside the screen, leaking onto the hard plastic casing that surrounded it.

Alma felt a twinge of fear. On either side of the monitor, other details were diffusing. A disorganized stack of papers now looked like a mound of snow. The computer monitor was still glowing, but it was no longer casting shadows. The chair beneath her felt incapable of holding her weight. Alma stood, pushing the the chair sideways, and stepped backwards. She immediately noticed the lack of wiry coarseness in the carpet.

She thought maybe she’d had a heart attack, but she hadn’t noticed any pain. Maybe she’d had a stroke or an aneurysm. She looked at her hands, grabbed her face, pulled her hair, shook out her old sweatshirt. She was the same. She was solid. Maybe she was going crazy.

She walked back a few more steps and opened the door of the apartment. The doorknob wasn’t cold and metallic anymore. It felt the same as everything else. Alma jerked her hand off the doorknob and shivered. She stepped outside, away from her apartment building, and walked toward the street. It was a hot day, but the sidewalk was the same temperature as her carpet. Looking at the buildings around her was like walking through an old memory. Nothing was distinct.

Alma stayed on the sidewalk and waited as everything in her reality became formless. She watched the colors of the asphalt and the sidewalk become indistinguishable from one another. Then she looked up and saw the last wall of her apartment building melt into the rest of the haze. She thought she was probably dead. It didn’t hurt, at least. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but nothing hurt. She’d heard people talk about purgatory. She thought maybe this was it. The world was thick and gray. It could have been endless, or it could have been four feet across.

Alma waited for what seemed like a long time. She felt like time didn’t mean as much now, but the novelty of the mist was wearing off. She was beginning to worry that if this was purgatory, she would be alone forever, just thinking too much and walking around in nothingness.

If she was stuck in the mist, something else would be there too, Alma reasoned. Alma tried to look into the distance, but it was impossible to plot out a horizon line in a void. She turned slowly, scanning the mist in all directions.

After several turns, her eyes settled on a dark spot. Something was definitely there. As she squinted at it, the dark spot spread. She was getting a sense of distance now. The dark spot looked human-sized, and maybe ten feet away from her. She kept focusing, and it’s lines became more distinct. It started to look familiar. As she searched her memory for what it resembled, the dark figure suddenly became clear. Alma’s stomach seized into an acidic fist. She screamed, knowing her grandmother had been right, knowing that she was dead, and feeling a terror that tensed every nerve and instantly slicked her skin with sweat. She screamed and screamed. The dark figure’s curling, fiendish horns tilted slightly back as it avoided Alma’s stare. It’s cloven hooves rested comfortably on the mist, with a tail twitching in and out of view behind them.

Alma’s screaming slowed to crying. She made sputtering noises, choking the last scream out in mucus. The creature shifted it’s eyes towards Alma. She wouldn’t meet it’s gaze. She had dropped into a squatting position, keeping her head faced resolutely in front of her, trying to take slow, deep breaths. Her arms hugged her knees, and her hands covered her peripheral vision.

“The religious men feel joy when they see us. You are afraid.” the creature said pensively.

Alma’s swollen eyelids pressed into her cheeks. She stared at the mist, fully alert and still too panicked to speak.

“Are you entertained by fear?” the creature asked calmly.

“What?” Alma realized she was turning her head and quickly returned to her previous position.

“Monks visit us intentionally. We assumed you desired to come here.” said the creature.

Alma’s hands were covering the sides of her head. She could feel her temples pounding and concentrated on that.

“Are you a demon?” she asked.

“No. You assumed this appearance. We have no form.”

Alma tried to think for a minute.

“What are you?” she asked.

“The monks have called us Nirvana,” said the creature, “But we do not name ourselves.”

Alma’s brow piled into creases between her eyebrows. Her hands still shielded her view of the creature. It sighed heavily, and scratched a hoof into the mist. They could not comprehend why the girl would produce a pain that she could not control. They felt the fear, but they could only feel it the way the girl could manipulate an object.

“Try to look again.” said the creature.

Alma looked at the gray, dead mist. She exhaled, realizing she hadn’t done so in a while. She turned in slow, short jerks and kept her eyes on the mist below her until she knew she was facing the creature directly. Her eyes darted up. It was now an elderly woman in a gray robe. Alma stared, still relatively terrified.

“What are you now?”

“Only your perception of us has changed. You chose an appearance that you feel is innocuous.”

“Am I dead?” asked Alma.

The elderly woman raised her hand to her face and propped it upright with her other arm in a way that reminded Alma of her aunt.

“Your form still exists, or you could not produce fear.”

Alma was slightly relieved.

“Are you dead?” she asked.

“We are aware, and you may consider us living, but we are formless. We cannot die the way that you are familiar with death.”

Alma sucked a string of mucus back into her nose.

“Are you a god, then?”

“We exist differently than you, and we are unassociated with you. We do not suit your definition of a god.”

The elderly woman’s voice was slightly more feminine now. Alma still felt weakened by the waning blast of adrenalin, but she was regaining control of herself. She wiped the tears off her cheeks with her sweatshirt sleeve.

“Why am I here?” asked Alma.

The elderly woman’s face appeared thoughtful.

“We believe humans are a single entity, like us, but bound together by their social interactions. When one mind of the entity dissociates from it’s society, it can be attracted to other consciousnesses.”

Alma’s eyes widened.

“Am I stuck here?” she asked.

“It does not benefit us to retain you,” the woman said, “We will return you presently if you desire.”

Alma blinked and was looking at the street in front of her house. If she crossed it she could get a cheeseburger for 99 cents. The concrete was burning her bare feet, and she smelled terrible.

***