The Day the World Stopped

Slowly I awoke, 'I wasn't dead,' I thought, but that belief changed as I gazed around, finding not the cold dark room slick with blood that I could call my tomb, but rather a world of wonder.

Stretching all around me was a sky of infinite depth, dark colours swirled and shifted, parting and joining in a cosmic dance, forming a backdrop of eternity for what truly drew my attention.

A field of stars close, far and anywhere in between stretched out all around me. Wherever I looked I could see the things I had yearned to study since I had first gazed up in the night at the world that lay in the sky.

'Where was this, had I truly died, was this the Afterlife' I wondered.

"Oh no you're quite alive, and this is hardly the afterlife, after all you'd have to leave to go somewhere like that." A voice echoed out, making me jump up in surprise and look all around to find the source of the illusory voice.

"Down here," it said in a lighthearted yet know-it-all tone, that now came from just below my feet. Looking down I saw it. It stood right by my feet staring up at me to match my gaze.

Of all the beings I thought could reside in a space as ethereal as this, I never would have thought I'd see the creature in front of me. It was a cat.

Its coat was half white half black with patterns of the two opposites weaved together, You couldn't tell if it was white with black patterns or black with white patterns.

It had a lithe agile body, a tail that leisurely waved about in the air, a little pink nose with whiskers poking out, and most striking of all, a pair of rainbow coloured eyes that shifted and changed forming colours I wasn't even sure had names.

But other than those striking eyes, every part of it seemed to be a normal cat.

"Normal?! How very rude, it is not my fault I ended up in a form you consider normal, It's you who didn't have a grand enough imagination to grant me a more fitting form, Hmph!" The cat thing said crossly.

"...." I tried to say, finding myself incapable of speaking words. "Of course you can't speak, you don't have a mouth right now." The cat responded to my attempt, after starting to stroll straight upwards, with, "I can hear your thoughts loud and clear if that is what you want to ask me."

Taken aback by this strange revelation I tried to focus my thoughts as if about to speak, asking it, 'Can you really, how?' "Obviously I can, I am you after all" the cat said with an eye roll. It paused its walk and lifted a paw, pointing it at me, "You are You," it said.

It then pointed at the space around us "This is Not You," and then it pointed its paw triumphantly at itself "I am Both, are we clear now?"

It finished and seemed to grin at clearing up the misunderstanding before continuing its stroll.

'What?' Is all I could respond with, my head felt as though it was getting emptier every second I spent with the thing, 'That doesn't explain anything.'. 

The cat stopped and looked back at me for a few seconds, before dipping its head and sighing. After mumbling to itself for a few seconds it stood up on its hind legs and started using its paws to gesticulate as it explained everything.

"We are in a place you would refer to as the soul space. Here resides the energy that is necessary for consciousness, You," It said pointing at me with one of its paws.

"Normally for lower energy conscious beings like yourselves this place is inaccessible as it is only big enough to fit the energy that resides in it. To gain enough space to move around and break through the soul wall separating you from the source of conscious energy, or the 4th dimension as you humans call it, parts of consciousness must be lost. Strangely you humans seem to do this naturally in a process you call dreaming, but that is irrelevant."

The cat shook its head.

"What is relevant is that you," It continued "Have surpassed the boundaries of a lower energy being. You have been granted an ocean of uncontrolled conscious energy, that you perceive as a reflection of your soul, for its true nature is near impossible to grasp, turning it into the land of stars and space surrounding us. That is the Not You."

Again the cat gestured to the space around us as it explained.

"And finally we get to yours truly, the emissary of the 4th dimension to you, and the emissary of you to the 4th dimension. I am the boundary that separates the You from the Not You, I am Both." It looked at me solemnly before breaking out into a grin, "Do you understand now?"

'I think I do,' I thought hesitantly, 'But where did this Not Me come-...!' I paused mid thought as I realised the answer to my question "Indeed," it said looking me in the eye "The purple wave, those alien whatever they are, are forcefully controlling what they don't naturally have, the idiots, Of course they would die from the slightest malfunction."

This time it shook its head disdainfully. It then shot it's head up, with shining eyes of unknown emotion, "But your species can, so rather than kill you the energy joined you, sensing you as a perfect host,"

I suddenly realised and strongly thought in jubilation 'Does that mean-!' 

"No," It said, "Whatever you can do is not common among your species, they are dead, truly dead." The cat's words shattered my newfound hope, bringing me back to the aching pain I had briefly forgotten. Humanity was still on the cusp of death, that hadn't changed. 

But maybe what I could do about it had, 'What does this change mean? what will happen now?" It responded, "I do not know, a higher consciousness can do almost anything to a being depending on who acquires it, there are many paths to the 4th dimension."

"But for right now" the cat spoke, "A pool of blood and starting to starve is no time for a nap and a chat. You shall find me again when you next sleep, Just wish to be here and here you will be for truthfully, you'll never have left."

With that said the cat turned around, waved for me to follow with its paw before dropping to all fours and making its trek to wherever it wanted me to go. 

After following it for a while we ended up at a particularly bright and large star. "This is the way out," the cat said gesturing to the star, "Just follow the light and you will awake."

Doing as it said I stared into the star and its light began to shift to a scene I found familiar and slowly but surely I could make out what it was; A stone ceiling. When I made that realisation I looked around and found myself on the ground, awake, right where I had fallen.