Heretics book 3 - The Apocryphile Press

342 :: JOHN R. MABRY
He wasn’t sure what to expect. Perhaps an explosion, perhaps
the terrible rending of his soul, but it was nothing like
that.
Time froze. The universe deconstructed. He saw himself,
at a great distance, arm upraised as if greeting the Gunthers,
a frozen tableau in a museum of the occult arts. But he took
little notice of himself, because all that is was also frozen in
time before him. Every creature, every interaction on earth
was visible and immediate to him. Other worlds were likewise
on display, with all their myriad inhabitants, their situations
and dramas. His mind nearly snapped with the magnitude
of it, but some grace touched and contained him, and
his perception took on even greater dimensions. What lay
before him was not simply all of space, but all of time as
well—the hard record of the past, and all the malleable, possible
futures spread out like a million strands of yarn secured
to the single point of the present and exploding into infinity.
There, clearly visible was his own past and uncountable
futures, possible loves, a thousand possible deaths. He witnessed
these without concern, as one tiny part of a whole so
vast he could literally feel himself teetering between comprehension
and madness.
As he breathed into this new revelation, another facet of
experience assaulted him—an overwhelming attack of compassion.
He did not witness all of time and space as a distant
observer, but as a participant, for even the sensations of the
tiniest microbe were experienced as if they were happening
to his own body. Every joy, every tear, every grievous sigh,
every cruelty, every sting of pride or hatred or envy, every
prick of pain, every ache of longing or love or loss that ever
was and ever could be, he felt as if it were his own. Indeed,
it was his own.
Amidst the cacophony, without effort, he felt his own insecurity
and despair, his crushing sense of unworthiness. And