Hector

He felt light. It was strange as up and down were unclear. It was like swimming in a fluffy warm liquid. In the distance, all around him, a slow music was playing smoothly like a calm river lost through time.

He was already gently spinning. He was seeing all around him. Sometimes his vision, or more accurately his perception, focused on a portion of this space.

He wasn’t alone. A presence was … near. Not physically, but he could still feel it in an unreachable proximity. It was easy to perceive it in all this void. Truly, it was a void, but as a distant horizon with all those tasty trails of colours. Many were different versions of sweets, especially the red or orange ones. The cooler colours tended to spike with old savoury memories. And, popping up here and there, some unnamed colours were pure discovery. Hector wanted to taste them all. He was fascinated by this uncatchable illuminated darkness. But everything was so far, so unknown.

Space.

The word resonated in his thoughts. It was not his own. That was a conclusion of the other presence. They observed together. Galaxies and stars continued their dance like they always had.

Hector found the other presence as fascinated as him. It was a dense presence full of a lot of tastes and sounds. It was complex, dissonant, but one. He reached it, with the only thing he was able to do: feel.

Confused.

The idea lost itself. Then by a form of catch, or gravity principle, it ended its course in the other presence. All of it was disturbed by it inducing a nearly imperceptible change in its own melody.

Memory? the presence asked.

Hector threw the only thing he knew, an image of his name. But another memory emerged, speed. Everything else was tasteless grey clouds.

A few centuries passed.

Hector couldn’t figure out what this presence was. Its thoughts were vibrating near his. So they were not his, so the presence was not him. The logical conclusion burst forth, like a bubble breaking the surface. It was someone else.

Oliver Enheim, Doctor. This identity carried a classic blue savoury taste of man.

In his way the doctor made it clear that he was there for Hector, he was his. A link between the two entities started vibrating, adding a faint note to the universe’s melody.

WHY?

Hector’s question was too vague, barely solid. Nevertheless, the doctor caught it with a quickly acquired proficiency. The question lost part of its weight in the process, but its borders became more concrete.

On the concepts of why they were there, or what this place was, it remained a mystery.

On the reason why Hector was here, the response hit him. It disturbed his rotation and Hector required multiple cycles to understand it.

Coma.

The realisation abruptly torpefied him.

The chains of consciousness ensnared him. A cold heavy anchor was pulling him back. He turned around incapable of understanding where this sensation came from. He had no body, no back, head. Nevertheless, he was in distress. The doctor sent calming images—plains and skies of a world that was once theirs. But all those scenarios were tainted by Doctor Enheim’s own stress.

Hector looked back. He just thought about it and he was sucked back in space. Millions of light years scrolled around him in the speed of a thought. He had moved far away from where he was. The palette of his horizon was destroyed and replaced by a similar but different canvas. This new universe—or at least this new perception of it—was disarming.

The savoury and sweet colours trembled. The doctor had been wound up by the experience. Their link became as thin as a strand of hair. In his primal attempt to escape, Hector had dragged him all across the universe. All his mind was conflicting, he was spiking in all directions and trying to recover at the same time.

Nothing.

Hector had just blinked. It had nothing to do with eyelids. He blinked out of existence as the universe stopped being for an instant.

Standing nearby, fresh like new, was Doctor Enheim. They stayed there observing each other, while the dancing lights in the distance came and went. In the corner of his perception, Hector glimpsed a spicy tornado pulling all trails toward it. The Doctor had a direct line of sight on a sour continuous generative explosion. Their observations just melted for one or two millennia.

What is this place? Hector formulated.

Space, the Universe, our Universe. I supposed. The Doctor responded.

I think so. I feel so. He concluded.

The doctor started observing a point in the horizon of their perception. It was neither a light, nor a presence, nor a material thing. It was a point in the universe.

Hector remembered the accident.

The doctor simply accepted this memory, with all its conflict.

The speed was liberating. The shape of the child on the backseat was distressing. The impact was horribly painful. The present was bitter.

The doctor suggested moving, but at a more managing speed for him. He hadn’t specified where to go, not exactly, but this point of the universe was still intriguing him. Carefully, Hector thought of the direction, not the destination. They moved instantaneously. The trails of colours, from all the spectrum and over, started drawing more oriented trails. The Doctor was painfully handling the displacement. Hector stopped and the colours of the universe became chaotic again. He was in pain but insisted on continuing. And they did. From the second shift, the doctor was already keeping up. And without really realising it Hector and him were moving full speed ahead for an unknown point of the universe.

Are they dead? Hector asked.

“Yes,” the Doctor responded.

This answer was crafted to be the blankest as possible, one confirmation nothing more, no judgement, no compassion. Bitter once more, Hector leaked some sensations. A conflicting will of letting go, giving up challenged by a heavy instinctive anchor of life.

“Can you interact with anything here?” The doctor asked Hector to blow away other thoughts.

It was so present, so dominating in his mind that it nearly felt like an order.

Curious and dictated, the patient changed their course to reach the closest light source. It was a big salty exulting ball of fire. Around it were orbiting two planets carving the star colour puddle by their passages. Thinking about it, Hector was able to feel them, their movement, their temperature, their pulsation, their dance. But he wasn’t able to do more, even if he tried, and he tried. The system was oblivious of his presence, of their presence. It continued its run through the universe as it would have without them.

So, you can only observe and move, the doctor noted.

And you can only observe, Hector heeded. What are we?

Here we are minds without bodies. Down to Earth you are a body without a mind.

My soul is roaming free, Hector tried to make sense.

If that eases you to see it like that, the doctor accepted with a point of deception about the narrow version of this simplification.

As the stars turned from a salty taste to a very sweet one, Hector decided it was time to continue their journey. The doctor seemed concerned. The patient compared them. It was clear that his spirit was so smooth, so simple compared to the exhilarating doctor. He had more angles, more folds, more nuance and more presence in him. He was linked to Hector, always where he was.

Then he popped.

Nothing.

Hector had blinked once more. When he came back, he stopped his course. He was still where he was and the doctor too. Their destination was still there. But so many things had changed. Where was he? The doctor had popped and so, he wasn’t? Was he only real? Or some creation of the doctor?

“How is it when I’m not here?” the doctor asked.

Hector tried to fight his distress. He wanted an answer so he remembered and gave some thought. It was cold and still. It was as if he had been in a stasis that had lasted a thought. There was not really a moment when the doctor Enheim was not there, not a long one at least.

“And still, you remember it, meaning you still exist during that time,” the doctor intervened.

“That doesn’t mean I’m real, that can be fake,” Hector retorted.

“And still you think.”

“…”

“I can assure you, you are real, Hector,” the doctor added with a huge dose of compassion and fatality.

He saw it. He saw himself. At least his body, plugged into more medical stuff he had ever seen. The throbbing sound of the monitors. The taste and texture of plastic down his throat. His crippled body, as seen by the doctor, cuddled by a weak hope. A painful heartbeat transcended the universes, shaking Hector invisible chains. He ripped them apart as he blew away this vision of death.

“Don’t show me that again.”

Hector added a clear image of his determination to hurt the doctor if he were to risk it. Without a warning he launched himself back to their trajectory. Now, the cosmological melody included some jarring notes.

They passed over a galaxy shaped like an eye. Few centuries went by without any thoughts. Hector was so focused on keeping his mind to himself that he nearly rammed into a binary star.

The stop was abrupt. Then Hector remembered he couldn’t be hurt anymore. He went through both stars.

The universe was gorgeous but empty.

The doctor noticed the thoughts escaping from his patient’s mind. The link between them thickened. Hector accepted it. The presence of the doctor became more … present.

Back on Earth, even before the accident, Hector’s existence was boring. Save for a few rare instances, Hector’s life had been unrelentingly bleak.He hadn’t spoken to his family in ages. He had some colleagues he was close to but no real friends. He had taken the easy path, no conflict, no joy, a little home, a little job. He hadn’t felt like dying because he hadn’t lived at all.

“Why help me?” he asked the doctor.

“That’s my job. And I was curious,” the doctor sincerely explained.

“Who are you?”

“An old soul that has experimented with life a lot,” Oliver Enheim exulted.

He was evasive but still gave a little bit more than words. He loaded his message with a submerging nostalgia. But the main implication was clear, he was old, older than any humans.

They observed a star explode as they approached it then get back together as they passed it. Gently, the doctor asked Hector to stop what he was doing. The star exploded again. They were both stunned. The doctor shared his understanding of what happened. They were going faster than light. This seemed orgasmic to him.

And just as he was about to explain why it was such a huge deal, the doctor disappeared?

The universe wanted to expel Hector, but he fought back. The cold was striking him but not painfully. However, he was incapable of moving. All his mind was focused on was the task of existing. He was alone and the universe accelerated. Stars exploded and appeared. Galaxies collapsed. Black ink bubbles of void burst as everything seemed to drive apart.

The doctor appeared in an electrical shock that nearly knocked Hector.

“I was there! I’ve existed! I exist!” the patient, ecstatic, assaulted the doctor.

The physician tried to overthrow Hector’s mind. He sent a multitude of news. As soon as he received the main idea, his patient shielded himself.

“The point you wanted to reach. I got it now!” he explained. “All the universe is expanding, and it’s expanding from it. I don’t know how I didn’t realise it before!”

One request after the other, the doctor axed its way into Hector’s mind. Before getting hurt, the young man let it flow through him.

Hector was dying.

The doctor calmed down.

“It took me months to reach you again. You’re not recovering, my friend,”

The doctor was sincerely worried and lost. Sharing pure thoughts had impacted them on such a deep level that Hector hadn’t even noticed.

“Will I die here if I die there?” he asked.

“I fear so,” his friend let go.

“Will you stay?”

“To the …”

The doctor was no more.

Hector was immobilised once more. But he knew he could fight back. Better, he knew deep down he could win. The universe was losing its tastes and colours. But Hector was determined to live it up to the end. After a century he was neither cold nor warm. After a millennium he was able to choose where to perceive. After a star’s life, he was able to move slowly. After a legion of galaxy existences, Hector was free once more.

He swam everywhere. Observed everything.

The universe was tasteless.

He followed a cloud of asteroids as they turned into moons in a loud blast. He experienced the fine taste of star death. A white anomaly caught his eyes. It was pulsing, expelling a wave of energy and matter.

The universe was silent.

Hector observed closely, at the edge of the white hole. The universe was getting back to the womb of reality, from a dense cloud of matter, to a soup of energy, to a flash.

And Hector stopped perceiving all at once.

The universe was invisible.

“Hector?” the doctor thought.

“I’m blind”

“What do you mean?”

“Is the universe still there?”

“Yes,” Oliver responded with the vivid image of the universe as they saw it together during their first exchange.

“How long has it been?”

“A week. It’s not looking good, Oliver.”

“It’s been eons for me.”

“Are you okay?”

“I couldn’t reach the centre of the universe,” Hector deplored.

“Don’t apologise! It was my desire, not yours,”

“Exactly,”

Hector could feel his chains dragging him back, fast or slow he couldn’t say.

“I lived a lot, too much maybe,” said the doctor. “Nevertheless, my body is young.”

“I decline.”

“What?”

“You are proposing that I take over your body or something like that. I decline, I’m not worth it.”

“I’ve lived too much but I’ve never met someone that was not worth it.”

“That’s naive”

“But true in your case”

“Will you die?” Hector asked worriedly.

“I’m not leaving you my body to kill myself. I’m giving you a body so you could live truly once.”

“But I don’t have anything to give you!”

“Think about it, I will be free here. You would gift me the possibility of enjoying existence again. Maybe even reach the centre of the universe.”

Time passed.

Please, implored the doctor Oliver Enheim, for both of them.

Hector watched the nurse cover his lifeless body. She took note of the time of death.

“She fought for such a long time,” the nurse added.

“He,” Hector corrected her.

“Yes, sorry,” she sighed. “All of that for a stupid road construction defect, that is sad. At least one of them survived.”

“What do you mean? Who?” Hector asked, starting to get accustomed to his new body.

“I thought you knew. The girl in the other car survived.”

Back on Earth, even if it was tainted, the universe was once again vividly illuminated by hope.