Unmade

Published in Trillium, Volume 14

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“I’ll lock the door behind you.”

“Thank you.”

The air is warm, but I am shaking. I undress by a single blue light and it does not bother me that I am naked. There is a shower head on the wall for me to wash away my history, my imperfections, my sins. I bathe quickly, anxious, but not afraid. I cannot help but stare into my future—the lightless, gaping black mouth of the white tank that fills most of the small room. Pipes run behind a limp curtain, where I imagine most of the technology is hidden.

I make sure all of the conditioner is out of my hair before turning off the water. All that’s left to do is climb in. One foot at a time, I crouch down into the tank. The shallow brine is warm compared to the shower water, but after a short adjustment period it seems to be the same temperature as my skin. I grab the handle of the square hatch and heave it closed over me. My sight is obliterated.

I lay back and am rushed upwards, inescapably buoyant, weightless. My hands against the walls tell me where I am, but not where the tank ends. When I let my fingers fall away from their hold on the world, I spin into nowhere, rolling away from perceivable direction and space. It almost makes me sick.

At first, I don’t think I can stand it. My eyes are wide open, searching for anything, finding nothing. My fingers never wrinkle, no matter how many times I check, not giving me the slightest indication of passing time. Residual air bubbles occasionally float out of my hair and brush my neck, startling me. My own thumb occasionally grazes my thigh and even that meager touch is unnerving. My body is slowly adjusting to nonexperience.

Time withdraws itself from my plane of existence. My experience is recorded in my mind with no regard for sequential order, my memories are not chronological. I always am, never was, never will be. There is no distinction between my body, the air, or the water. There are no ends or beginnings and I breathe all of it in. The tank is infinite and infinitesimal, I am everything, nothing, everywhere, nowhere.

I float through a dead void; I become a disembodied consciousness containing all that can exist, but I can still hear the steady intake of breath, feel my heartbeat shudder through the hazy shape of my body, hear the dry crinkling of my eyelids as they shift somewhere in between open and closed. My reality is a liminal space between physical and intangible being.

I stopped thinking—or stopped remembering thinking. Perhaps I stopped existing before a vision brings me back to my distorted reality. A white fog creeps across my vision in a cloudy horizontal line. It is painfully bright to my dilated eyes. It soaks into my lungs and they are heaving as if the air were growing thinner. There is a silent humming, a vibrating energy that pulses through me. Ultraviolet polygons blink in and out of creation. There is a sudden movement that invigorates the cosmos, causing it to shift.

I am empty and yet more vividly alive than I can recall ever feeling. There is a purity in the lack of being that frees the spirit. The present moment is all that matters, all that can matter, all that can be, and that moment is eternity. Nothing becomes everything.

A single soft note rings through the tank, ringing in the return of time and space. I have awakened, I have fallen asleep. I drag myself upright, my weight returning to me all at once. Blood, muscle, bone, they ache again in protest against gravity. I feel for the hatch in slow motion. The music is rising but no less gentle. I finally crack open the door and the soft light streams in. I look down at my ghostly pale hands, my thighs, glowing, unfamiliar.

This is death. This is rebirth. I clamber out into the world, trembling wildly, a fresh fawn on uncertain legs. I wait for my mind to return to me.