The Valhalla Covenant

When the sun set, they returned to the house and made some further alterations — adjustments to the room that flowed from their newly shared insights. Sasha referred to it as a studio — a place of art — and by this time Reimas was aware that what he was trying to achieve was more closely related to art than he had ever imagined.

He’d taken on board her earlier words about being hung up on the goal, and felt as if a great burden had lifted. It wasn’t just this goal — he was no longer concerned about any. The planning, the execution, the moment-by-moment appreciation of what life presented to him were what counted.

In the improvised ‘dream lounge’ a semi-circular seating arrangement around the fireplace made it the central focus, with most of the electronic equipment arranged behind the lounge chairs. In an atmosphere newly enhanced by a small collection of lamps with coloured bulbs, a small fire and some gentle music, Sasha set about making every effort to help Reimas relax for his next attempt at transition.

Surprisingly, success came quickly. She tried not to jump when she saw the brain wave monitor move to the zone he had told her was ideal but quietly moved to the easy chair near the monitoring screen.

Reimas found the warm place again quickly. His focus was sharp and his imagination clear. Again, the overwhelming searing white vibrations came on, except that on this occasion, after he began to float he seemed to rise a long way through blackness before experiencing the strange click of release.

Something about the long ascent led him to believe that he might be moving out beyond the atmosphere and, indeed, when he emerged from the dark phase he saw a cosmic panorama of stark contrasts. Despite the shock he felt a totally intoxicating sense of freedom. The ability to move out through such lonely zones of cold darkness and hard bright light was more natural than he expected. It had an eerie feeling of familiarity.

After an initial wave of euphoria, he gathered his thoughts and focused on locating his surroundings. The sun was the most obvious landmark, but it was distant and he could not distinguish Earth from all the other pinpoints of light.

Confident that he would find it again if he came nearer the sun, he willed himself forward, but the ensuing speed beggared belief. After only a second or two, the raging incandescence of the sun almost filled his field of vision. In the time it took to think of stopping, he’d almost plunged in. There was no sensation of heat but a sense of vast power that made him glad to have stopped where he was.

Looking back, he saw the small, inviting blue dot of Earth once more, and thought to try an experiment: simply to think of his home. Much to his amazement, in a moment he was floating above it, looking down on the house and the lovely garden set in a hidden crook of land high in the mountains.

Cautiously dropping a little more, he re-entered the house but applied the mental brakes again to prevent him unintentionally slipping back into his body. Sufficiently close in the end to be aware of a sort of elastic tugging, he could see his body lying prone in the recliner on the other side of the room with Sasha sitting nearby.

Reassured by what he saw, he moved away again to begin an extended exploration into space, confident that no matter where he was he need only think briefly about something familiar and he would be back in little more than the time it took him to form a mental image.

Setting out towards some unknown destination was, however, a different matter. With nothing familiar to aim for, he experimented by gradually increasing speed and moved up away from the spinning disc of the galaxy so that he could establish a sense of perspective. When he was far enough above the vast spiral to see where he was going, he shot in towards the centre.

Passing beyond any familiar region of space in seconds and accelerating towards the unknown cosmos, he found he was moving so fast that individual stars a great distance away visibly expanded in size in an astonishingly short time.

Even then he found that he could go faster, and once he had reached the sort of speed where tiny dots were growing into raging suns and disappearing behind him within seconds, he felt it was time to perform another experiment.

Carefully observing some of the more obvious characteristics of his location, including a binary star system close by, he thought of Earth and instantly found himself looking down on it from about half way out to the moon. In another moment of thought he was back at the distant binary star.

A seductive sense of pure power came with each virtually instant translocation. It was a strange astringent feeling, less like acceleration than expected — brief but felt throughout his whole being.

Beyond the binary star he flew on to a system that had several planets, one of which was reassuringly blue and Earth-like.

Descent into the atmosphere was pure joy even as he passed through a thick cloud layer. When he emerged from that he could see snow-capped mountains as well as lakes, rivers and oceans. Closer in, cities, buildings, roads, houses, farms, bridges and ships on the ocean came into view.

Some of the ships had sails while others motored under their own power, though there were no exhaust stacks belching out fumes, black or otherwise.

As he zoomed in towards what was clearly a great city Reimas knew there was something missing, but for a strangely long time couldn’t put a finger on it. All of it was so clear and beautiful and in the end he realized with a shock that there was no air pollution.

There were vehicles on the streets but they appeared to be very innocuous looking objects that sported large padded projections on all sides, quite obviously designed to minimize harm to pedestrians. After watching for a while, Reimas noted that they only ever moved at relatively slow speeds.

Turning his attention away from the streetcars, he noticed a large clear tube extending all the way across the city in a circuitous route. Occasional branches extended away from it into the countryside. Inside the tube capsules shot around, evidently cushioned by pockets of air as they approached stations or intersections.

Although not unlike humans, Reimas couldn’t help but laugh at the inhabitant’s peculiar features. Moreover their clothing was minimal, as if attired for the beach, but what really stood out was that they never appeared to be in any great rush. Most stood around in groups talking calmly and, yes, quite evidently laughing.

Outside the cities he observed a countryside that seemed sensibly divided between productivity and wild natural beauty. Most inhabited areas looked park-like and well cared for, and there seemed to be very little sign of industry, pollution or obvious mining activity but all over the place there were tall structures of gleaming glass that excited his interest.

Below each were hundreds of acres of shining glass panels. At first he thought they were unusual looking cities but then it occurred to him that the tall structures were solar towers and indeed, as he came closer, he could hear the whirr of fans and the hum of electrical generators within.

Everything seemed both peaceful and productive yet the feeling he received from observing the culture was strangely bewildering. After some minutes collecting himself, he became conscious of the realization that, firstly, humans were after all not alone in the universe and secondly, in broad terms they were more than just a little barbaric.

Uncomfortable as that realization might have been, it was soon followed by a profound sense of relief. Earth was not alone and whether its people scorched the planet or not did not matter so much anymore, since the weight of responsibility to keep the candle of sentient life alive in the universe evidently did not rest solely with the human species.

But then Reimas felt the shame. It was like a dirty slick of some acrid chemical in his mouth. The aliens on this planet were clearly capable of living in peace, prosperity and harmony with themselves and nature.

Why then were humans so busy destroying themselves and fouling the Earth?

Now that the question had come up and Reimas knew there was at least one other inhabited planet in the galaxy, he felt a strong desire to go and find more — to see how they fared. Given his earlier experiments in instantaneous translocation, he focused on thinking himself directly to another inhabited planet, and it worked.

Building on his experience on the first planet, he directed his focus more quickly and found that he could vastly accelerate the analysis. The volume of input ended up being astonishing. Different people, designs and styles of habitation, transport, amazingly bizarre variations in landscape, all in seconds as if he were a super computer tapping into a sophisticated spy satellite.

Planet after planet revealed essentially the same story: sensible forestry and rural practices; well cared for landscapes; friendly, happy, industrious people well organized in conventions and systems that supported life in a way that made it a pleasure, not a task of drudgery at best and a nightmare at worst.

Reimas hovered in space over the seventh planet, sinking steadily into a state of despair that made him want to return home to the amazing girl who sat next to his temporarily inert body, minding him and keeping an eye on his stats on the monitor screen nearby.

In a flash he did just that and observed Sasha from the unique perspective of the astral, perceiving that she was healthy, vibrant and enthusiastic in both physical and emotional terms. She was in fact beautiful. Her aura glowed golden tinged with blues and pinks, and he could not help thinking that something more than pure chance had caused them to meet.

Looking in on her from the astral, in the light of the newly acquired awareness of the callous and threatening nature of their world, his depression changed to anger, and as he opened his eyes he felt the sting of tears — tears of rage that caught him quite off guard.

Sasha’s eyes met his, and eager curiosity was immediately apparent in her glance.

“Hello,” he said, simply, knowing how banal that would sound, but it was all he could do to control the powerful waves of negative emotion that swept through him, and he did not want Sasha to be the recipient of such wrathful pain.

“What happened? Where have you been?” she asked, clearly excited.

“Where haven’t I been would be more to the point,” he said, shivering with the effort of keeping a rein on his emotions, “and have I got some things to tell you about. There are other people! There are worlds with people on them, societies, cities …”

“Are they real?” she blurted out, unable to keep from interrupting him. “Are they astral worlds or material ones?”

“Oh, they’re real all right; as real and material as all this. After all, the things I saw when I first went into the astral were material as well, so if it was a hallucination, it was a damn good one.

“I came back and saw you looking at the monitor screen then I travelled to seven different planets in as many different star systems, and found out that once I knew where I was going I could get there almost as quickly as thinking about it. These worlds, they’re beautiful, peaceful and well organized.”

“That would make a change,” she said wistfully.

Reimas got up and told her all about it from beginning to end. Yet the more he told her, the greater the reservations she seemed to have about the reality of what he’d experienced, so he began to search for a way to convince her beyond any doubt.

Soon he remembered seeing a bulldozer that had been working just over the hill when he returned. He told her exactly what he’d seen and took her out to the car. After driving for several kilometres, they crested a hill and there it was, just as he’d said.

As he turned back to face her, the expression in her eyes drove home Reimas’s own sense of wonder. Both knew now how momentous the occasion was, and their minds raced on to all the things that might now be achieved.

All the same, back at the house all they could do was to look at each other in disbelief and try to absorb the power of the moment.

At the back of his mind, Reimas still felt the anger and resentment he’d returned with, but he also felt the beauty and wonder of the experience.