The Light

The Light by Billy Rigney
(Science Fiction Story)


I.
“John, what is wrong with you? Why can’t you talk to me like a normal human being?” screamed Michelle.
I could only hear her juvenile voice for a few more seconds before my cell phone hit the water. I always wanted to do that, since hanging up just never seemed to get rid of her. She was good to me for the most part, but in these past few months no one has been able to help me. I’ve simply cut myself off from the rest of the world.
Strangers might see what I’m doing right now off the pier, so I better make this quick. Thankfully I thought this through unlike some kid that I used to know. I was going to make sure this actually happened. I stepped forward out of the lighthouse which was relatively easy to climb up. It’s so dark looking out into the ocean; in the far distant I could almost see a few ships. The light slowly going around me felt like I might have already died. I wondered if the light people saw right before they past was anything like this blinding bulb behind me.

So I dived into the watery oblivion without any hope of coming up again. It never entered my mind that somewhere a being might care what I’m doing here this moment. There’s not much to explain how I got to this point. I lost the will to live; it shouldn’t take a higher being to figure out this. I had so many friends and family members that pretended not to notice my depression. In a way I suppose it’s my fault, I always tried to make sure everyone was happy. Silly of me to think this favor would be returned to me someday. No matter, I jumped off of a lighthouse almost 200 feet high into the Pacific Ocean. I’ll be dead soon so no one will have to worry about me anymore.

As I was sinking down into the ocean I thought I saw a light. This one was so incredibly bright it could have been the lighthouse underwater. I didn’t swim towards and it was somehow getting even brighter. It was coming towards me. I welcomed it in since I assumed that it was death coming to suck the life out of my cold body. Sure I was scared; the human instinct is to be afraid of death. I never really felt like every other human though, but this feeling was for sure fear.

It still didn’t seem right though. It felt like the bright object was actually swimming towards me. I could feel the force of the water ricocheting off of me like a wall of vibrations. Now it was suddenly transforming into a light shaped person that was now reaching for me. At this point my survival instincts fully kicked in and I started swimming towards the surface as fast as I could. This however I found out quickly would be pointless, the light being caught up to me in a second. We then exploded out of the water, past the lighthouse I just attempted to commit suicide off of, and into the clouds.

II.
“Where am I going?” was the thought I was asking myself over and over again.
“To a better place.” said the light being. Though he didn’t actually say it, or did he? I could have sworn I heard it but I have no memory of actually hearing it, only thinking it.
“Home.” said the light being repeatedly. I can’t believe this is happening. I mean just a second ago I was under water and now there is nothing but…well nothing. I can’t see what’s happening. Only I know we’re travelling at speeds never thought of by man. The light being must be an alien of some kind; this can’t be Death doing this. None of it goes along with what I’ve heard or read before. Then again, all those things have never been told by the people who have actually died. This is what I always believed.
For some reason I’m not afraid anymore. In fact, I’m pretty excited to feel/see what happens next right now. Perhaps this is one of the affects the light being is bestowing upon me.
“I am called ☉✡☨≠≠☩, or you could keep calling me the Light if you would prefer.” said the Light.
But I never called him “the Light”. So was it telepathic, or something of that nature? For a second I start to laugh inside my head. This is the first time in a long time I have felt like the normal one.

““Normal” is a word used for the weak minded group. “Unique” is the term I use and what others use to describe the ones respected. You (John Rig) are the one we have deemed unique for the human race. So unique, we might just have a chance.”
What was he talking about? What chance of what happening? “The chance to save existence from the nothingness. We do not know what the nothingness is. Your race describes them as black holes. But we believe them to be controlled by a particular element. It is the same element that opposes the energy that gave us existence.” The Light said.
It took a few hours I thought to reach his world, but in actuality with the relative space and time travel who knows how long it took technically. The Light did not bother to explain to me the math of this journey’s duration since more important things were on his mind. The world we reached looked like an arctic green forest with no sentient built physical structure in sight. In fact the only places where they resided were in the clouds above my head.
How I was able to breath was something I hadn’t yet figured out since it looked like this planet did not contain normal vegetation. Then the more I thought about it I realized I was not breathing anymore. I started to panic. “Was I dead” I thought as loudly as I think I could. The light answered me quickly “you are of another element here, not of flesh but of energy. What you see right now is your mind’s reflection of yourself. The reason why I look just like a white silhouette to you is due to your mind’s perception of my image. What I actually look like is something you will learn to understand and decipher for yourself.”