With the arrival of April, spring fever was injected into the weather like steroids. All of the snow was blasted away by the sun and the temperature was reaching into the high 50’s, basically tropical climate for Mainers. I had almost an ominous feeling about the warmth, because I knew that the summer would be unbearably hot. With the warm weather thawing everything out, Angel was getting me to do the one thing that no one else could make me do: exercise. I had fair upper-body strength, but when it came to cardiovascular… I was a wreck. All those years of lounging and staying uninvolved with everything had come back to haunt me. I hated all exercise, but being with Angel made it tolerable… not that going for a daily jog didn’t make me feel like my lungs were filled with razor blades.
One afternoon, Angel and I were jogging through the park by my home. Actually, she was jogging; I was shortening my lifespan by trying to keep up. We stopped when we finally broke out from under the trees, feeling the sunlight on us. I was leaning on my knees, trying to catch my breath. I nearly collapsed from relief when I heard her speak those four golden words: “Let’s take a break.”
In the shadow of the branches and budding leaves, we rested beneath the branches of a tree on the edge of the meadow. Angel was sitting against the trunk, and I was lying down with my head in her lap. The air was filled with the sound of chirping birds and animals taking advantage of the warm weather. She was humming a soft tune and I could feel blissful relaxation seeping into my tired body like rain on soil. The fresh spring air was mending my aching lungs, the perfume of the thawing ground and the revived plants was making me melt in bliss, the warmth of Angel’s body was easing my muscles like a gentle massage, and the hypnotic notes of her humming felt like a soothing lullaby.
“You know, back when I was sick, I used to contemplate life and death and what they meant. It wasn’t a morbid gothic thing, just a curiosity, a preparation for what I thought was coming.”
“Oh really? What did you come up with?” she asked as she leaned down and kissed me on the forehead.
“I don’t believe there is any meaning in life or this universe, no value or purpose other than what we create for ourselves. But even going against that and all the neurons in my brain screaming at me to be logical, I am convinced that there is an afterlife. I’m not talking about a heaven or a hell, but just some plane of existence where the sentience remains.”
“How do you figure?”
“Memories, everything we think and experience is merely a reaction to events and our surroundings, a recorded recoil that takes the form of a memory. Consider the amount of time it takes for information from your senses to be received and process by your brain. It takes maybe a few nanoseconds? But consider everything that can happen and has happened within the span of a few nanoseconds, and in increments of time even shorter. Outside of our human perception, a nanosecond could feel like a century.
Even now, every thought that passes through my mind and everything I feel, they all occur before long before I am truly aware of them, in which case, my detection of them is really nothing more than a memory. I’m always living in the past, my mind trailing behind the flow of time, only reacting when information is memorized and played like a flashback. Every second is just a memory for your mind, while your body moves on through the future.
So if that’s true, is it possible that my whole life could just be a single memory? A movie playing in my mind that is eighteen years long and ongoing, with my brain always wondering what’s going to happen next while my body and the world around me create each new scene about to be viewed? In which case, I could be remembering this from a hundred years into the future, having lived an incredibly long life. This conversation might not be happening in real time, but is actually something that occurred a hundred years ago and I am currently remembering it in real time.
But memories cannot exist without the mind. A movie cannot exist if the disk or tape it’s imprinted on doesn’t exist. Therefor, if I am a memory, a continuous memory being relived from some point in the future, then that memory must go on forever. Maybe the memory doesn’t stop… just because my body stops. The only way this memory can continue is if there is a mind able to play it back, to retain the information. So when I die, my mind will be unable to play the memory and I will cease to exist in my current form. But I do exist, meaning that I still exist in the future, and as long as I exist in the future, I exist in the present, meaning that I exist for all eternity, but my form is merely different from what it once was.”
Angel giggled. “That’s fascinating. I’d love to hear more.”
“Sorry, but that’s all I’ve got so far. Speaking of life and death, I have to ask, where did you come from? I’ve spent more time being grateful that you’re here than just wondering how you came to be. You told me before that you have my memories, but I don’t know how that’s possible. You were originally a figment of my imagination, right?”
“Yes, that is right.”
“Then how can you go from being imaginary to real? How can you go from being inside my mind to having a physical body?”
Angel just smiled and again kissed me on the forehead. “The day is soon coming when I will explain everything to you, but it is not today. Do not worry, do not be afraid, just enjoy the present and look forwards to the future. Always remember that we shall be together until the end of time.”
“As long as those words remain true, I don’t care what happens,” I said sleepily before closing my eyes and dozing off, listening to the sound of Angel’s sweet humming.
School was coming to an end and everyone was getting antsy. Angel and I couldn’t be happier. She would still be homeschooled during the day, but we would have all summer to be with each other, and by the skin of my teeth, I had managed to make up all my missed work. Oh, and graduation was coming. On one of the last few days of school, I was in woodshop class. The grades had been closed, so we were allowed to just use the machinery for whatever we wanted. I was using the gear-controlled table drill to work on a special project.
One of the other students walked over to me. “Rumors say that you have a girlfriend.”
I didn’t even acknowledge him and just continued with my work.
“Is it someone here or from another school?”
By his tone, I knew that it would be a bad idea to answer. If I gave a name, everyone would instantly try to find whoever it was. People would hassle her for being with me and try to anger me by making lewd suggestions about her. I knew human nature well, and I knew what went on in the mind of high school jackasses. I just continued my work, not even looking at him. When I moved to a power sander and began smoothening my creation, the guy got the message that he wouldn’t get anything out of me, and left me to my work.