The Welcome

Page 7 of 8

Seemingly only feet above the ground, so close she could see gray and dull blue rocks lining the yellow sand, the angle changed and she was now flying parallel to the boulders and canyons she felt she had almost slammed into.  The ground was mostly below her field of vision, with the majority of the wall filled with the purple glow she now knew to be some kind of clouds.  Although unable to see much of the landscape for reference, and with the clouds having only some slight definition, she still had the same sense of tremendous speed, moving faster than she ever could have imagined.  The angle tilted again, towards the ground but not at the dramatic dive she just escaped, and she saw a large mass of rubble taking the center of the screen.  

As impossible as she felt it could be, the landscape below passed faster, moving towards her quicker than she could fully comprehend, and still the pile of rubble lingered in the distance for several long seconds.  During these seconds, she again saw flashes of random images of people she had never met, faces she couldn't recognize, coming up only quick enough for her to notice the image had been displayed, then disappearing again into the distant remnants of some structure that was approaching faster and faster, but still very much in the distance.  The images sprang up quicker, more frequently, until the wall was a blur of faces and desert, a landscape moving past her at unbelievable speeds alternating with smiles and grimaces and tears of strangers.  Barely able to discern the landscape beyond this strange flipbook of people, she could see that it was still moving faster towards her, and gasped air for a scream she knew she'd never release as the broken chunks of some strange material filled the screen in between the random faces.  She braced herself against the wall of the hallway for an impact she knew would have no effect on her.

The images ceased, and the landscape turned to black as though someone had flipped a switch.  After the incomprehensible speed of only a moment before, she felt as though she were floating now, flying freely with no sense of gravity or winds.  As she floated though, she could tell it wasn't completely black; there was a dim light in the center of the wall, a dark blue glow that pulsed, getting brighter and dimmer at a steady, moderate pace.  She felt both terrified and awestruck, the glow was both utterly repugnant and breathtakingly beautiful.  And it was getting bigger.

It wasn't growing, she realized, but she was moving towards it, with just as much speed as she had traveled the alien landscape before.  And she felt something now, something real, something she could feel while sitting in her hallway and not just an optical illusion of motion.  She felt a profound pain, a sadness, mixed with an exuberant joy and pleasure.  It too both scared her and inspired her, and the feelings grew as the glow on the wall grew brighter and larger.  The mixture of feelings was so alien to her, so undefinable, that it tore on her sanity, pulling her in different directions, as the glowing object grew so bright and so large that the entire wall in front of her was covered in the light, now as deeply blue as an ocean created to be perfect by a Hollywood set designer.

In a sudden blackness deeper and more complete than the one leading to the blue glow, the joyful pain stopped, and she sat there, shaken and confused.

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