Chapter 397: Telling My Loved Ones About My Voyage

Saturday, November 3, 2007 (Continued)

Everyone was in the Adults' House, mostly in the living room but some scattered around. Julia spotted me coming up the hill and used the intercom to summon everyone else to the living room. I entered through the living room's ranch slider doors, my girls running to cuddle with me. My dishes would be in the way so I bent over and put them on the floor, where the baddies' cameras wouldn't see them as they skidded along the floor to the kitchen while the girls rushed into my arms.

"Are you all right?" | "What happened?" | "It's bad news, isn't it?" | "You're okay, aren't you?"

"Sit down and we'll talk about it."

They didn't so much sit down as stayed glued to my body while I walked across the room to sit in the middle of the nearest sofa. Carol and Julia in my lap, Ava and Donna to either side, with everyone looking very worried, including me.

The four parents were here and sitting, so I started, "Last Thursday something happened to me which was a major development in my life. I can't describe what it was, but I can say that I entered into it willingly and the result of it includes that I've made a very large commitment that I have to keep. There was a chance that my commitment wouldn't be necessary, so since Thursday I've been checking that out, but now I'm sure that it will be. I don't need to leap into action right away, so I'll spend a few more days making sure. A week would be fine, maybe even two weeks, although that's pushing it a bit."

"What do you have to do?" asked Julia.

"I'm nearly up to that part, darling..."

#13: <We'd better fly a large pile of hankies up the tunnel.>

We did that, leaving them on the floor just outside the living room.

" ... This isn't about the Surveillance Problem. As potentially big and scary as that could become, this is something much bigger. If that problem disappears tomorrow, my commitment isn't affected. In answer to your question, Julia, what I have to do is go on a journey of discovery..."

"We'll go with you," stated Julia instantly and firmly; Carol, Ava and even Donna echoing Julia's declaration.

"I would love to take you all with me, but that's not possible. Only my mind is going; my body is remaining behind."

"Huh?"

"Like Astral Projection?" queried Vanessa.

"Unfortunately not. When I leave my body, it will die."

"What! But how will you get back?"

"I can't come back, Julia; this is a one-way journey. I'm sorry everyone, but I'm going to be leaving your lives soon, and I won't be able to come back."

"I don't understand?" said Donna. No one else did either because no one was crying yet, although I was close.

"In a week or two, my mind will leave and my body will die. Mark Anderson will be gone from your lives."

"You'll be like a ghost, right?" asked Julia, clutching at a wisp of hope.

"I have to go on a journey, my love. I'm leaving your lives totally, and I can't come back."

"Never ever?" checked Carol.

"Never ever. I'm VERY sorry, but I have to do it, and it's a one-way journey."

Julia's voice rose into a shriek, "You're going to DIE! And we'll NEVER see you again!"

"I'm sorry Julia, but that's right."

"NOOOO! YOU CAN'T MEAN IT! PLEASE DON'T MEAN IT! PLEASE MARK?"

"I'm sorry, my love..."

#5: <I'm surprised the girls aren't bawling their eyes out. Julia is close, but they've held off.>

#9: <Because of hope, I think. What we've said is so weird they're hanging on for a loophole in their understanding to reassure them it's not true. Once they accept it is, we'll need those hankies.>

#All: <Agreed.>

"NOOO! MARK, PLEEEASE DON'T GO. I LOVE YOU! YOU'RE MY WHOLE LIFE. WE ALL LOVE YOU. YOU'RE OUR LORD AND OUR HUSBAND. YOU CAN'T GO WITHOUT US. WE WANT TO GO WITH YOU."

#24: <For goodness sake make SURE she doesn't think she can follow us by killing herself.>

"Your mind isn't powerful enough..."

"TEACH ME! TEACH US!"

"You know I would LOVE to do that if I could, but I can't. Why do you think I've had such a bad time the last few days? I HAVE to go, I CAN'T take anyone with me, and I can't come back."

"We're going to lose you?"

"I'm very sorry, Julia, but you are."

Carol was the first to burst into tears, closely followed by Julia. Ava and Donna joined in, the mothers came over to comfort their daughters, and they got caught up in the emotion themselves. In a few seconds, the floodgates were open, and the hankies were being grabbed off the midair stack. I had no spare hands, with frantic girls grabbing my arms in their need for reassurance.

The next quarter of an hour was as bad as I've ever seen. Living among girls I've seen a lot of tears before, but nothing on this scale. Saying "There, there" had NO chance of having any effect whatsoever. There were many sobbed comments, most of which were too blubbery for me to understand. The few I could make out I couldn't respond to because there was too much noise and the girls weren't paying attention. Toward the fifteen-minute mark I corrected one of the half-sobbed comments with, "Don't think of it as me dying. My mind will still be fully alive and active. I'm just going on a very long journey, is all." It didn't help much, but perhaps fractionally more than "There, there" would have. Maybe if I repeated it twenty or thirty times it might sink in.

Prof showed me how to do it. He pointed out, "Each of you is losing Mark but you've still got each other. Mark is losing ALL of you. He's going to be alone on his journey. When you've finished crying for yourselves, please pull together for his sake. He's going to need your support."

Prof's comment, "When you've finished crying for yourselves," wasn't said sarcastically or accusatorily, it was his literal instruction. He wanted the girls to have their cry, and then to see that there were - according to Prof - more deserving issues for them to be concerned about, such as Poor Lonely Mark. The girls heard his point and ZING: the waterworks stopped. It was a hell of a lot more effective than "There, there." Next thing I know, they're all apologizing to me. I was dumping them in my wake, and they were apologizing to me!

I assured them there was no need ... They assured me there was and that they felt terrible for being so selfish ... That went on for a while.

Carol still had to question it, "You're REALLY going to die. Just like someone killed you?"

"From your point of view, it'll be exactly the same as if I had a peaceful heart attack."

"But why would you do that? We love you and you love us. You shouldn't leave us."

"I love you all VERY much, and I've NEVER been more aware of that than I am now. You KNOW I love you, Carol, and you know how much, but this is even more important. This is more important than staying with every person I love, and more important than all the hurt I am going to cause you by leaving."

"What is 'this'?" asked Vanessa.

"I can't answer that directly, but I can give you a comparison which is quite accurate in terms of its emotional value.

^-- "Imagine that I had a choice between staying here, in which case every person on the planet would be in mortal danger, including all of you; or if I left to go on my journey of discovery, I'd have a very good chance of saving everybody's life. I HAVE to try to save everybody, includes my loves. There's no choice."

"Is something forcing you to sacrifice yourself for humanity?" asked Prof.

"Nothing like that. That's a good guess based on the information I've given you, but you're not even close. My saying everybody on the planet was in mortal danger wasn't meant literally, but because it's similar to the emotional value of the real reason, which I can't tell you."

"Why can't you tell us?"

"Because it would destroy human civilization and kill almost everyone. You don't want to know that secret, do you?"

"No I don't."

"What's going to happen to you?" asked Mom.

"I'll answer that in more detail than I normally do. My dying will start with my mind leaving my body first. That's the thing I can't teach Julia or anyone else how to do. It's very similar to my being able to see with my eyes shut. Julia, if you ever learn to see things in other rooms with your eyes shut the way I can, then you'd be halfway toward being able to follow me on my journey - but I know you'll never be able to do it so please don't waste your time trying to learn, especially because even if you learned it, you wouldn't know which direction I've gone in so you'd never be able to find me.

^-- "Then I'll order my body to die, similar to the way I order it to go to sleep..."

"Let it stay alive, Mark! That way you can come back when you've finished," suggested Julia hopefully.

"Sorry. It doesn't work like that. It's a one-way journey whether or not my body's left alive. My mind can never get back, and all that would be left behind would be a mindless shell. My personality, memories, hopes, dreams, knowledge and EVERYTHING that is in my mind, is going with me. My body would have nothing left inside it, not even enough of a mind to tell the heart when to beat, lungs to breath, or anything else to work either. My body will die, and there's no way around that, and even if there was, it'd be a mindless shell.

^-- "To finish Mom's question. Once my mind is free, I have a journey of discovery ahead of me. A very good metaphor is a series of rooms with connecting doors. When I'm in one room, I can open the door and see into the next room, but I can't see into the room after that because that door is on the opposite wall and is shut. When I leave here, I'll be going into the next room. I already know what's in there and I won't be discovering anything new. The door will shut behind me. The problem is that it's a one-way door. Once I enter a room, the only way out of it is to go forward. Once I'm in the next room, I'll look through its next door and study the next room. If I like the look of it, which I almost certainly will, then I'll move into that room. That'll be the process for room after room. I can estimate what the next two or three rooms are like, but beyond that I'm expecting some interesting surprises.

^-- "You know I like science, and the scientific part of my journey will interest me greatly, but that is NOT why I am doing it! There's NO WAY I'd ever leave you behind just for scientific curiosity. I'm going because it's very important and I made a commitment to do so..."

"Who did you make the commitment to?" asked Vanessa.

#4: <Don't be tempted to be cute and say "ultimately to myself." There's no need for it and it's too much of a hint.>

"I can't say, Vanessa. I'm sorry there's so much I can't say, but it's all tied up in that horrible secret that'd destroy the human race."

"Are you sure it would?"

"Positive. If the secret got out, we'd be doomed."

Dad asked, "How will you manage without a body?"

"Good question. The answer is 'fine'. You've seen how my abilities have improved over the last couple of years. I can see without my eyes and I can move things around with my mind. I don't even need to eat much now. I've gotten to a stage where I don't really need a body. Provided I disconnect my mind in the right way, which is very tricky but I know I can do it, then I won't need a body any longer. Unfortunately, that means I won't be able to go clothes shopping any more."

#6: <That fell flat - and I don't mean that as a ghostly joke. I don't think jokes are going to work in this situation.>

"You're REALLY going, aren't you?"

"Yes, Ava. I'm sorry. I can stay maybe ten days or so, and I'll try to make them as special as I can for each of you, but what I have to do is too important to delay it for longer than that."

"Ten days?"

"Sorry Carol."

"And we'll never, ever see you again?"

"We'll know each other are alive, but we'll never meet again. We can't even send messages. Once I start my journey, we'll only have memories."

"BUT I LOVE YOU!"

"I love you too, Carol; very, very much."

"PLEASE DON'T GO!"

"I have to, My Love, My Wife."

"{SOB!}" x just about everyone.

#1: <I'll get more hankies.>

Carol interrupted her sobs to declare, "I want your baby!"

"Me too!" declared Ava, followed by Julia and Donna echoing it in unison.

I was debating how to answer that diplomatically, but Vanessa had no hesitation in saying, "We'll discuss your lifelong commitments when you've got cooler heads."

The girls accepted Vanessa's unequivocal tone; even Carol, who was by far the most determined.

The girls returned to Prof's theme of my being alone, expressing great sympathy with that, comforting me, expressing their apologies for their selfishness again.

#6: <This would sure be a different situation if they knew we'll be stepping into existing relationships with their identical copies.>

#19: <We're still justified in doing what we're doing, but it'd be a lot harder to convince them of that.>

#27: <Given that we have to leave the next place, it'd be better if we were stepping into a hermit.>

Donna asked, "Are there going to be people where you're going?"

#4: <We have to duck answering that as "Yes" and "No" both lead to trouble.>

Prof added, "WHERE are you going? The way you were talking it wasn't on Earth. Do you know of life elsewhere?"

"Both good questions. Unfortunately, like most of your good questions, I have to duck answering them. I'm telling you everything I can, but not those answers."