The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

torn pants revealing a gimpy knee. Ben never looked more helpless. Jamie could heal those wounds with a touch, but he chose not to reveal his newfound strength until Ben did something to make up for this nightmare. He dropped the gun to his side but kept his trigger finger firmly poised.

“Be quick. In case you ain’t heard, I’m gonna die this morning.”

“Bottom line,” Ben began. “There’s more going on inside you than you realize. The Jewel isn’t just some algorithm. The truth is bigger than the Chancellors, than all of us. Nobody would’ve discovered it if we never came to this Earth.” He pointed to the flash drive. “The proof is here, J. The answer to the question nearly everyone on this planet asks: Is there anything beyond death?” He paused. “You remember how I started attending church in the last year before Mom and Dad were killed?”

Jamie shrugged his shoulders. Mostly, Jamie recalled it as the year Ben became a different man and began pulling away.

Ben continued. “We’d always been taught to stay away from religion, that it was a primitive way of coping with irrational fears. The early Chancellory wiped out all divine faiths thousands of years ago, during prehistory. That’s what repulsed our parents most about living here: The very idea of heaven and hell, a God and a savior. Chancellors don’t believe in such things, but they do value extended life - have even sought the keys to immortality. The Jewel hybrids are the precursors to that path.

“So when I went to church, I wasn’t looking to be converted. I just wanted to understand. I wanted to be a good observer. But I got so much more than I expected. I’d been studying religions of the world, reading theology, looking for common threads among all these belief systems. Over the years, I pumped Ignatius for everything he knew about the origin of the Jewels and their integration with our DNA. His father led the bioengineering team that learned how to weaponize Caryllan Wave energy.”

Jamie scoffed. “That’s the one where I go all nuclear?”

“A Berserker. Potentially. Yes. At any rate, I was curious about the endless anecdotes I read of what might happen to the body and soul at the moment of death. The very idea that a human being was a vessel containing a soul, and the soul left the body to pass into a higher plane of existence … this was impossible. Yet, there were enough testimonials that I couldn’t ignore the evidence. Anecdotes of a ‘white light,’ a tunnel from one life to the next, out-of-body experiences. These reports have been floating around for centuries, the same ideas discredited after the rise of the Chancellory.”

“And what the hell does this have to do with me?”

Ben paused. “I believe the human soul and Caryllan energy are one and the same. The Jewels of Eternity were designed by an ancient race to preserve its legacy. Some have theorized that the collective consciousness of that race is embedded within the Jewels. They call it consciousness, I call it souls. Human souls are the same energy but in a purer form, a part of the natural fabric of all things. What people see as a spirit ascending to a higher plane is simply the energy of the universe returning to its natural state.

“Look, Jamie. I know don’t about God or Allah or Buddha, but I do know this: We are vessels. We do carry something inside. You are literal proof. Most important, we are part of a greater mosaic and have a power no one has truly understood. And you are the most unique of us all.”

Jamie was dumbfounded. Ben may as well have grown tentacles, sported three noses and sang “Yankee Doodle” while flapping his fins.

“Everything I been through today,” Jamie muttered. “All this hell, and you stand here wasting what time I got left with some kind of … it ain’t even religion. I don’t know what it is.”

Ben nodded as if he agreed. “Here’s my point, Jamie. The engineers who designed your genome to include the Jewel energy did not believe in human souls. If they understood the relationship, if they truly knew the greater picture, they would never have finished their work.”

“Oh, really?” Jamie laughed. “And why’s that?”

“Because they would know that the human soul just might be strong enough to alter their program. Maybe even defeat it.”

Jamie almost dared to hope. His heart made an extra, tentative beat, as if unsure whether celebration was in order. He could think of no words, the fear too great that what he just heard was a mistake.

“Are you saying I can beat this thing?”

Ben’s eyes flickered away for an instant, but Jamie didn’t have time to pass judgment before his brother answered.

“There is life. There is death.” Ben paused for a beat. “Neither one of those on their own can save you. But there is a third option. It is the most dangerous and the most fleeting, but it is all you have left.”

 

40

H ERE’S HOW IT might happen,” Ben said. “There’ll be an instant when your will to survive is so strong that you stop thinking and give yourself over to the universe. If you somehow disconnected yourself from the limitations up here,” he said, pointing to Jamie’s head, “I believe you could literally will the Jewel’s program to end the re-sequencing. Perhaps destroy it altogether. The possibilities are …”

“Crazy.”

“Thousand-to-one shot, at best. This is where it becomes difficult.”

Jamie laughed. “Did I miss something? Was there an easy part?”

“Jamie, to give yourself to your soul is to say goodbye to the flesh. To control the Jewel, you’ll have to separate yourself from your body.” Jamie’s hope slipped away like the yellow leaves of a birch in autumn. He heard Ben’s words but couldn’t digest them. “There’s an