Chapter 2 Zavier

Ever since he was born Zavier had been consistently in the clutches of a life-threatening disease that was bound to take his life before he ever reached his prime.

? A congenital heart disease since birth could pretty much take the joy out of one's life. Same was the case with Zavier who had no way to live like a normal person for as long as he had been alive.

What he had been doing could hardly be called living at all since it was devoid of all the basic joys of life. His life was comparable to a constant reel of sadness, grief, and hopelessness with no streak of hope in between.

Many doctors had been consulted regarding his case but there was no one who could give him even a little bit of hope. All the doctors had reached a consensus regarding the grace period that he had been awarded by the heavens. Eighteen years was deemed to be the absolute limit of his life. No doctor could tell him that he could live beyond Eighteen years of age and yet he did not lose hope.

Living each day in constant fear of whether there would be another day or not could be the biggest torture of them all and yet Zavier was living this bleak life while holding on to the hope of a better life.

Zavier like other children his age was very eager for the life of a normal person his age. He wanted to go for a walk, run around, see places with his own eyes that he had seen only through screens.

But owing to the restrictions imposed on him by his disease, all his life he had never even gone beyond the hospital grounds. He had spent almost all his time lying in bed waiting for a miracle.

But the heavens never took pity on him, and the most anticipated miracle never came. The night before he was supposed to turn eighteen, Zavier finally could not hold on to his life any longer and departed for the yellow springs.

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In his last moments Zavier remained delirious due to his body that was pumped full of anaesthetic drugs to keep him in a muddled state that numbed the pain. He could feel himself slowly drifting away.

Zavier had always fantasized how his death would be. The best theory that he had come up with was that there would suddenly be nothing and there would be endless darkness like when you are about to go to sleep.

He had heard from others that your life played out in front of your eyes once you were close to death. He felt that this recollection of all the memories of one's life might have been a good way to go out for the others when their life came to an end.

But for him, even that would have been another picture of sorrow and misery since in his entire life there was not a single moment of happiness or something that could be regarded as passably happy or joyous.

So, in the end he concluded that for him, the end would be just a dark abyss and nothing else as there was nothing for him to recall. No happy moments, no beautiful relationships, no smiling faces, no recollection just darkness.

But the reality of it blew his mind in its entirety. What he had regarded as the dead end turned out to be a journey to the beyond. What he could never have done while living, he could finally experience after death.

His soul after it had left his body, didn't scatter and neither was it plunged into the depths of a dark abyss. Instead, it travelled to the void in space where there was nothing, nothing at all.

But even amidst the nothingness, there was a voice that seemed to be calling out to Zavier softly. He was stunned. He couldn't believe that something could exist out here in the middle of nothingness.

The voice started to increase in amplitude as his soul continued to move across the void seemingly heading for a predetermined destination.

"Zavier…"

Soon Zavier could clearly hear the voice and at the same time he made sure that he was not hallucinating and everything that was happening was real. The voice that he had thought to be a part of his hallucination up until that moment turned out to be something real that was actually calling out to him.

He was wondering whether the person that was calling out to him was someone he knew.

Zavier was somewhat scared as to who it might have been because all his life, he had never left the hospital grounds. He did not know many people either.

"Zavier…"

The voice sounded out again at regular intervals as if guiding his soul towards itself like a beacon that constantly relayed the right path to the travellers.

It didn't take long for him to stop at a place that to him still seemed like the middle of nowhere.

The next time the voice sounded, it felt to him that the voice was right in front of him but visually he could not find anything.

Suddenly an idea struck his mind and fit accurately like the last piece of the puzzle.

"Are you God?"

There was no response from the voice at first as if it was only programmed to call out his name at regular intervals but then the voice communicated with him as if it was another person.

"Hmmm…well the idea that you have is correct. The function of both of us is the same but the way you have given me a physical entity through your words is not right. The human language is too limited. Its words are not enough to depict the existence that I am. But if you want to think of me in terms of human terms you can call me the nerve centre of everything in the universe. Or better yet, 'the cosmic consciousness'."