Immortal Part 5

“You promise?”

            I nodded but didn’t say anything, just to prove I was serious.

            “My research,” Emryl whispered leaning in a bit closer to me after a minute or two of silence. He had obviously decided that I would keep my word about not interjecting my opinion until he was through, “over the years led me to a whole bunch of weird stuff. Some of it, I’ll admit, was laughable. But some of it was rather interesting. Some of it is really scary and some of it is truly amazing and remarkable.

            Two years ago I found this website. At first it seemed like all the normal stuff you see on most websites about this kind of thing.”

            “You mean about monsters.”

            He glared icily at me and sat back into his seat and folded his arms, “You promised.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said sincerely and I reached out and grabbed his hand, “I’m sorry,” I said again.

            The waitress brought us our coffee and cups of ice water and I was almost done with my coffee before Emryl forgave me enough to continue.

            “But there was some other stuff too. It talked about secret societies and… you know the stories we here about the supernatural, especially, let’s say… vampires and werewolves or whatever… they’re immortal, right? But most of the stories we hear and that we’re familiar with, age them only back a couple hundred years. We’re fascinated by the stories of four hundred year old men and women that look twenty or so, walking around the earth sucking blood off of unsuspecting humans. But if they’re immortal, Syd, they could be much, much older.”

            I wanted to laugh and say, “yeah, if they existed at all!” But I picked my cup of coffee up and sipped at it, staring at Emryl with wide eyes. I hoped he would think that I was interested rather than considering having him committed to a mental hospital.

            “That’s what this website suggested. That while there are newer vampires, there are also the ancients. And when I say ancient, Syd. I mean ancient. Like dating back to the time of the dinosaurs… to before the time of the dinosaurs! This website also kind of suggest that we have a… skewed version of events to make us feel better about our existence. Humans like to feel like they’re in control.  We like to think that we’re the superior intelligence on Earth and that we dominate our universe. But we don’t.

            I’ve spent the last two years reading about this and studying this and… do you know the only thing truly universal… the only thing that is constant and never changes? Math.”

            “Math?” I blurted with a laugh in my voice. I couldn’t help it.        

            “Math,” Emryl repeated. “You can prove, or disprove anything with Math. A thousand different guys from a thousand different countries, all speaking a different language would still come up with four if you asked them to calculate two plus two. It’s definitive and absolute. There is no variable for the answer. If you know the puzzle, and understand the concept… you will find truth in math.

            This website suggest that our existence, the world we live in, the society of which we’re a part is all an illusion. That we delude ourselves into thinking it’s the truth and we have thousands of years of history and lore to back up the lie and we don’t know any better so we go about existing and living and dying thinking that our everyday comings and goings are actually…

            “Oooooo!” I blurt suddenly, “Like that movie! We aren’t actually living our lives… we’re all hooked up to some machine and “they” are actually in control.”

            Emryl didn’t look quite as annoyed with me as I thought he would. I had meant the comment to be insulting and make him realize how far out there he was being and that maybe he would be so mad that he would just tell me to go. Instead he considered it for a minute and then nodded, “Kind of.”

            “Emryl, you sound crazy.” I said bluntly.

            “But we’re not hooked up to machines or anything. We aren’t in a dream state. We’re actually alive and we are doing what we’re doing, we’re just unaware that we’re… kind of in a cage, I guess you could say. Outside of this…” and he waved his hands around, “Is a whole lot more. We, humans, aren’t exactly in control, but we, humans are unique. We have souls and choices and… some things can’t be dismissed like, we were created in God’s image and that we are the sons and daughters of God.”

            “Emryl…”

            He held up a finger and shook his head, “They want the immortality that we were promised in the bible. They have immortality in that they generally don’t die of old age or whatever, but their existence is hell and eternal damnation. They want what we have. Every day wars are being waged between the forces of evil in order to achieve and take what we, as humans, are guaranteed.

            Every so often, humans get a glimpse of reality… the reality that is… beyond… this… that’s where legends and stories and fables come from. 

            So I have devoted myself to finding out the truth. We don’t know the right questions to ask sometimes so we can’t get the right answer. We believe that our reality is… reality so our scientist only ask certain questions. They only dig so far. They only theorize within our realm of thinking. We are awed by the fact that man walked on the moon. We send probes in to outer space… thinking we’re looking for more but… we’re not really. Not really.

            I’ve been working on some equations, over the last couple of years… searching, trying to prove or disprove or… just trying to find answers. I mean…” he waved his hand in front of him again, “but those details don’t matter. What does matter is I think I figured it out. I think I know the truth and that’s why they’re coming after me.”