Chapter 4

“Well, are we ready to resume?” Charles asked as Vivian cleared the plates. The couple nodded. The elaborate breakfast had been followed by a simple lunch, with a niçoise salad accompanied by a dry Riesling.

Charles reached over to the adjacent counter and pulled an envelope onto the table in front of him.

“You asked about the process of conversion – sometimes called metamorphosis – from human to Elysian,” Charles began. “It’s a three-stage process. I will summarize the first and third stages, as the second stage requires a more extensive discussion.”

“The first stage,” he continued, “involves ingestion of Amrita and sex with an Elysian of the opposite sex.”

“And you’ve already gone through the first stage,” Vivian added.

“We have?” Julia said, her mouth agape. Mark stared at Vivian, stunned by this development.

“Yes,” said Julia. “The wine all of us drank last night contained Amrita, and of course you know about the sex!”

“I must add that the administration of Amrita was not done without your consent,” Charles said.

“Our consent?” Mark said, looking quizzically at Charles. They hadn’t consented to something being added to the wine.

“Naturally, you are asking yourself ‘When did we consent to the Amrita?’ Well, this will come as a shock to you: we have previously told you everything we are about to tell you and, based on that, you agreed to join our ranks.”

“We did? When?” Mark asked, in disbelief.

“Well, I’ve mentioned the special ability of Elysians to erase short-term memory or, more accurately, to prevent the consolidation of long-term memories. This, we did, after we explained everything to you and obtained your consent. This is a required step based on long experience. As we’ve mentioned, the Dacians are ever-vigilant and the discovery of a couple who are about to undergo conversion is a golden gift. If we were not to have erased your memory of that event, they could elicit all of that information from you through administration of their drugs.”

Julia and Mark stared at him, still reeling.

“And to validate what I have just told you, I show you this.” He opened the envelope and slid documents over to Mark and Julia.

Mark read the first page and then the last. Their signatures were on it. He went back and quickly read the rest of the four-page document.

He looked up at Julia, who was still reading, her eyes wide.

“It’s just so hard to believe,” Mark said, shaking his head.

“I understand. And this document will be destroyed as soon as you’ve had an opportunity to review it more closely in private. And this might be the opportune time to do that.”

Mark mulled this over. He looked at Julia, who was leafing through the document shaking her head, still unable to comprehend that she had heard all of this before and signed her consent on the document. Mark put his hands on the table.

“If Julia agrees,” Mark said, “I’m not sure we really need to review it more. To a large extent, we are in your hands. We’re in kind of an ethereal realm. We either have to trust you or not. I don’t really need a document to decide that.”

Julia looked up slowly from the document and met Mark’s eyes.

“I agree,” she said.

“Excellent!” Charles exclaimed. “I’m so delighted to hear that, because trust is the very essence of the Elysian spirit. Without it, we are exposed and vulnerable; with it, we are united and safe.”

“Oh, I knew, I knew, I knew you were the right ones,” Vivian said, planting a kiss on both of their cheeks. “I could just feel it in my bones. It makes me so happy.”

“More on the stages, then?” Charles asked.

“Sure,” said Mark, with Julia nodding.

“The Stage Two conversion – which we’ll skip over for the moment -- is the one that results in the changes in intellectual capacity. Stage Three appears to simply lock in and perhaps reinforce the changes.”

“How do you know when it’s time for the Stage Two conversion?” Mark asked.

“We don’t, exactly. It’s a minimum of 28 days after the initial doze of Amrita. We generally wait about 33 days, just to be certain.”

“Initial dose?”

“I’m sorry — I’ve muddled the sequence and undoubtedly confused you. There is a second dose of Amrita administered fifteen days after the first dose. The physiological changes begin to become apparent after that – within 24 hours. The intellectual changes don’t begin to occur until after the Second Stage.”

“What happens if you just skip the second phase – don’t you still get most of the ... changes?” Julia asked.

“Alas, no, my dear,” sighed Charles. “Without both Stage Two and Stage Three, you’re a candle that burns ten times as bright and thus can last only a very brief time.”