Chapter V: Destiny in the Details

There was some audible note.  The density of silence beyond the border of my creative space had thickened momentarily, like an active shrug of confirmation to my statement.

I had to decide… eventually.

I couldn’t stop my mind from turning inward again.  Another wayward journey down webbed corridors of veined, gray matter.  Nanobots scattering like cockroaches, already steps ahead of their new orders.  I wasn’t just seeking the memories of those I’d loved.  Of those who’d left life before me, but why they’d been there at all.

“Per contract.”

Right.  I knew that.  I’d actually read that somewhere… ah, yes.  In Kryon by Lee Carroll.  I had only ever read part of the first book, but…

“You believed in it.”

“I believed in the idea of its possibilities,” I correct.

There had been the teachings of Seth, as well.  The similarities shared by a friend, though never read with my own eyes.  And let’s not forget the Celestine Prophecy.  Still, the fundamental logic of it all was significantly, notably fathomable.  In a single lifetime, you couldn’t possibly have a chance run-in with every single person living in the same state as you.  Yet, my parents had met in a west coast city only to discover that for at least a decade, they’d been Midwestern neighbors.  Had my grandmother not moved my mother; had my father not joined the military, only to get stationed far from home – they never would have met.  Or would they have?

This was the tricky thing when one considered the presence of fate; of things predestined to occur.  Being a genealogist in my last life had only brought to light the handful of times these ‘chance’ moments had happened in my family’s history.  Where my very existence had momentarily, precariously balanced on the razor’s edge of never happening at all.  More than one instance when an ancestor had been left, literally on the brink of death.

So, when examined in the context of ‘contracts’ for each individual’s lifetime, the odds of my parents ever meeting really weren’t that slim.  But, can I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that that’s the same as fate?  Is destiny nothing more than a divine contract?  And what of those who’d entered and exited my life briefly?  Had their presence truly impacted the course of events of that lifetime?  What had been the purpose of our ‘contracts’ intertwining? Childhood memories?  Adulthood misery?

I’d lost dear friends along the way and those losses were never simple.  They were the ones cocooned in regret for things left unsaid, marred by distances no one ever attempted to bridge.  Ironic deaths of loved ones who chose to do the right thing and walk home from the  bar, only to get hit and killed by a drunk driver.  Shocking deaths from silent killers lurking in their own skulls.  Medical rarities that are never supposed to happen to the ones you know… the ones you love and yet, they do!… because they have to happen to someone and Death holds no prejudices.  None of us are special.  We’re all fair game in the eyes fate.  The question is, do we do it to ourselves?  Via contract?

“You don’t have to relive the pain.”

“I need to decide,” I do nothing to stem the heartache or the tears, as the initial grief of each individual loss replays before my mind’s eye, echoing in my phantom heart.  It feels different than in life.  It’s merely a haunting, like the residual energies left behind sometimes by fatal catastrophes.  “Will I see them again, if I choose to stay?”

“Yes and no.”

The memories slowly release me.  My gaze regaining focus, and I can’t help noticing that the train depot seems a little further away than before.  Or perhaps, I have taken a step back.

“Right,” I whisper, wiping the drying tears away.  “Time and space, and all that junk.”