Watching Raindrops Fall
The world froze on a Wednesday, two days before the S’ha Maharr arrived. Their vast ship opened up like a blooming rose and uncounted tendrils unfurled from its interior, each one casting out the small clear spheres that were to watch us for the next few thousand years, holding a geosynchronous orbit above the planet like a billion dew drops on a spider’s web. After that, it’s difficult to remember what happens – happened? – next. Maybe it will happen soon.
I’m going to be stood here, standing here, in the street outside my office, as the rain begins to fall. From this point in time, I have always done this. The tiny spheres of water. The tiny spheres of water hang around me. In half a hundred years I will understand that each one, every one of them, contains a universe as infinite and magical as ours. Some more so. Others less. But each a miracle of chance and fortune. This is how it is. It took me half a hundred years to see this, as they were held before me. That’s how long it will take me to understand. The S’ha Maharr know this, and now I do too. I am being taught. Somehow I can make my eyes see these new worlds, and these new stars. Somehow I learned to do this. All I need was time.
This is how I know, how I always know, how I knew this thing, that one day – not soon, not for such a very long time – one day, one of us – each of us – would realise, as we had always known, that we were not flesh. The S’ha Maharr could teach us this, as they did and always have done. They gave us time, and take away the distraction of impermanence, and allow us now to see. When nothing moves – when your heart stops, your blood stops, when the time and space around you simply stops – when all this goes away, but your consciousness remains, despite the fact you know, or come to know, that neurons have become inert and synapses fail to fire, then you realise the way to set you free. All of us. As the S’ha Maharr intend. They have the time and power to give us this, and they give it freely.
So, half a hundred years go by, and half a thousand more, time fails to mean what it meant before, and then all of us saw what is there to see. We see universes in droplets, we look around with consciousness and mistrust our obsolete eyes. We did not miss our heartbeats, and the warmth of moving blood; we did not miss the feel of the air and the warmth of the sun. We did not even miss love, when it was around us all the time. It was there all the time. In the space between atoms, in the parts we could not see. And then we will lose these things, as we lost them freely, and we will become thought, as the S’ha Maharr intended. We were souls, always. We become S’ha Maharr and they welcomed us home.
I think – We put away childish things – and we all think, We put away childish things, or perhaps the opposite is true. We all thought that at one time. And then we move up and away from our bodies, which are things we leave behind – we always left behind – and we leave the earth which held us for so long, and we are born again for the first time. We are light, and made of light.
We are become perfect, because not one of us is perfect. Some of us call it God; some of us call it wonder. But we know it is S’ha Maharr. They will come to set us free.
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