Lying there on the ground, his good arm cut off and fingers twitching a few metres away, he struggled now to control his breathing. No amount of controlled stress exposure in life could have prepared him for this ride. His axe lay between him and his arm and he inched towards it at a slugs pace until he was able to clench it with his non-dominant fist. The bodies of his foes are scattered around him, all dead or dying, including the last of them, the one responsible for his severed arm. The glorious moment at which he cut through this adversary’s carotid artery with his belt knife will live on forever in the organic matter that remains of him, consumed by the worms, trees, and birds.

He calms his breathing as he begins to feel the coldness of this next unassailable foe. While the blood drains from his wounds, he accepts the cold now and embraces this new adventure as it begins, as if he has a choice. He is about to discover the answer to the unanswerable question. Excitement is replaced by the deepest of meditations. He continues to focus on his breathing as with the many times he has practiced ancient yogic breathing exercises. And as always, the beautiful snowflakes and other concentric and fractal patterns that appeared in his vision, begin to materialize, eyes closed. Those innumerable moments dancing the line between consciousness and eternity were a rehearsal; a mere hint at the kaleidoscope of oblivion that awaits us all. Or most of us.

Distracting memories dance in front of him. Some joyful, some deep and meaningful, others absurd and inexplicable. Then there is the blackness. And then the light. The light becomes yet more patterns, shapes, and colours the likes of which we only typically see in procedurally generated displays at dance parties, spawned from equations. M.C. Escher on steroids and acid. His consciousness moves into this ethereal fabric. An ever morphing framework at the smallest possible scale from which all other existence is manifested. These colours and shapes are stronger than anything he ever saw in his breath work. Not that he would remember now, as he becomes detached from his memories and consciousness. He is no longer a “he”, or a human, or a mammal, or on planet earth, or in the year 2022. His life force has become a part of the origin once more, from which it may by chance leave in order to become a living thing again. His memories are at the mercy of the physical realm and become a part of other beings through the random connections they make with each other. Eating, drinking, breathing, genetic inheritance, and other forms of consumption and transference that we have not seen or imagined.

The void. The fabric. The ether. The platonic shapes. The Mandelbrot set. The lights without photons. This is what is everywhere but cannot be measured or detected. It is where we come from and where we return to. Reaching this state makes everything else seem irrelevant and inconsequential until we learn that this is not the fate of all life forces. Only those that have lived a relatively true life, on balance, are destined for this psychedelic treat. Perhaps we will discover the fate of those who have lived less altruistically some other time.