The PRL Event: Darker Resurrection 22
The Mysterious Realm
When Darker sleeps, he gets flashes of it, but he doesn’t fully appreciate it. It’s sort of an overload, the expanse from the vantage point of earth is difficult to wrap his hrain around and his mind reconciles the overload in his subconscious. He can see the place where he was and it is in a settling chaos, like all of its energies had been violently stirred and is finally left to calm. He can feel the life forces their and all of their possibilities recover from the scramble. Sleep will be perilous to Darker for a while.
He wakes today after a couple hours in the chaos because his body has to rest, and he finds Maria in the kitchen of Eakran’s home eating granola and strawberry yogurt.
“There’s more if you want,” she says and she pretends to scan the news on her phone. She stifles a smile, she really likes to see Darker alive in the world.
Darker nods, grabs a bowl, and sits next to her.
“I kissed him,” Darker says, pouring granola and then putting yogurt on top.
“Oh,” Maria says, genuinely surprised.
“Yeah, it was a bad move. He didn’t like it. He hugged me, and then we just talked business. He’s doing business with the guy who killed me by the way. He replaced me very easily.”
Maria looks at Darker with sympathy. His return to life was kind of a soap opera and he didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have these types of problems. He is obviously tired, there are bags under his eyes.
“You can help me kill him. Don’t die Darker, I know it’s hard, but you can help me. Leave that drug life in the past, use your real name. Evens…”
“Nobody has ever used my first name,” Darker says. “Even my mama called me James, my middle name.”
“Well, maybe it’s time to try it out. Be someone you’ve never been before.”
Darker nods. “So we’re going to another planet?”
Maria nods. “And then you can do what you want with the doctor.”
“I should just kiss him again. That weirded him out.”
“Why are you in love with him?” Maria asks and she puts down her spoon to really hear the answer.
“Maybe it’s because we were both hiding something about ourselves,” Darker said thoughtfully, “that’s the camaraderie that I felt with him. Bonding over secrets is a bad idea apparently.”
They both continue their food, the only sound in the very modern, very chic kitchen is the sound of their spoons against the bowls and their chewing.
“What was it like?” Maria asks after she finishes.
Darker takes a deep breath. “I can still see it when I sleep. I don’t think I ever really left it. I don’t think you can. Once that happens to you, everything you were becomes something new. The man I was isn’t gone, but I’m something different now. I don’t even think I can call myself a man anymore.”
“You’re a man to me,” Maria says. “You’re a real man. And you’re my friend.”
Darker and Maria smile at one another.
Eakran watches the two before he enters the kitchen to join them. Hearing Darker talk about his afterlife experience made him stop and listen. When he is done, Eakran realizes that he had a tear in his eye and he wipes it away. The afterlife was real, all those rounts of education on Druont were wrong, he had been miseducated and the false beliefs had given him the false security that he could defy death by producing a new iteration of himself. This is widely believed on the planet Druont that is inhabited by the hermaphroditic Druintes who can produce offspring without mating with someone else; the first self conceived offspring of a Druinte is the only offspring considered to be a true iteration of the original. He is Eakran 15 on his home planet, but that means nothing. His previous iteration was a being in and of themselves and he is nothing but a child of that being.
It really does change his conception of the universe and even more so than the kiss Darker had planted, it is everything that Darker represents that explains Eakran’s apprehension with the man.
But Eakran does join Maria and Darker in the kitchen, and they finish breakfast together before they all head to the IBF.
PRL Serials 