THE NACUU

A long time before I was brought into existence, humans weren’t quite what we know today. In fact, I’m not even sure we could call them humans at all. You see, the universe has many layers to it. Some we can feel and touch, others we can only sense. Some layers are made up of physical things, others exist as intangible things like feelings and thought. Like when you try to describe the redness of red to someone who has never seen color, or the feeling of betrayal to someone who knows not of it. These things exist outside of the physical world, yet are every bit as real as anything else in the universe.

Like the world of dreams. A world that exists in …well, nowhere. A ‘Nowhereland’ per say. Have you ever noticed how almost anything can happen in that world? In a dream, even time and space are just there to hold together the building blocks of a specific moment. When the moment is gone, everything fades away, yet meaning and purpose remain like an echo.Almost as if purpose and destiny were the building blocks that hold the universe together. Sounds strange when you put it those terms, doesn’t it?! But you know it’s true, because like every other human, you have felt it too. That’s where I was born, I suppose. In the notion of destiny and purpose.

Humans at that time called themselves ‘The Nacuu’ which means something like: ’Those who walk through worlds’. They had evolved to the point where they were able to travel between the layers of the universe while staying ‘awake’ (for lack of a better word). Like staying in control in the middle of a dream. It’s hard to describe this in physical terms, but what it meant in practice, was that the physical world was like a backyard in which they could play and learn. They could create anything out of pure thought. They could conjure up enormous monolithic structures, move oceans and mountains, all as easily as you would be able to in a dream, yet all in the physical world. Some might call this sorcery …and some did.


THE GREAT DIVIDE

As the years went by, some Nacuu ended up attaching themselves more and more to the physical realm , as the millennia went by, they grew less and less able to enter ‘Nowhereland’ in a conscious state, and eventually ended up locking themselves into the physical world.

As the remaining Nacuu were persecuted in the physical realm and hunted down as outcasts, the only way the Nacuu could survive was in the world of dreams. In the realm of Nowhereland. All humans could enter Nowhereland, yes, but the difference is that those who cling to the physical world, are not able to stay awake in the world of dreams. They simply pass through like a soft breeze in the summer night. Unnoticed and inconsequential. Because of this, The Nacuu could exist there without ever being noticed. The Nacuu were still able to enter the physical world, but had to hide from humanity by pretending to exist as part of them.

Like everything else, The Nacuu are created by the universe, and thus can also be taken from it. Although they can exist for thousands of years (as perceived from the physical world), when a Nacuu dies, they are simply erased like any other living being.


THE LIGHT

This is where my story begins.The Nacuu had one wish, and one wish only. They were on a mission to return humanity to they way things were. A unification, you could say. They wanted to awaken the sleeping souls of Nowhereland, and open their eyes to the greater universe.

There is no force more powerful throughout the worlds than that of ‘purpose’. And just as powerful as it is, once it is lost, it almost feels like an immovable obstacle in the dark. Maybe this is why we refer to the loss of purpose as ‘times of darkness’.

And so the Nacuu realized that the only way to bring humanity back, was by creating a physical being, born in their world, that would be able to show the way back to Nowhereland, And so they created ‘The Light’. A being that, unlike the Nacuu themselves, would be able to walk humanity back through the great barrier and show them the way.

To do this, The light, (the human child) had to be born into the physical world, and had to be brought up and shown the ways of the Nacuu within that world.
Yes, I’m sure you have guessed by now who this little human boy was. I was that boy.


THE PLAN THAT FAILED

Unfortunately for the Nacuu, they underestimated human greed, and I was torn from my Nacuu father by the age of five. Because of this, I wasn’t shown the ways of the Nacuu, and believed I was a human like any other.

I mean, I noticed that I was able to hear the thoughts of others like whispers. I could sense things that were about to happen. And although many humans hated me for this, I believe that this is why they kept me alive. I was making my capturer rich. …oh gosh. It almost hurts to remember his face. Captain Nerva.

He took me under his wing. As a son, he said. But there was no love in his heart. Only greed and violence. We sailed the seas under his banner for most of my youth. We went from raid to raid, as he hunted the ultimate treasure that he had heard so much of, yet knew so little about. ‘The Light’ he said. A treasure like no other. ..Hah!, if only he had known the truth. But at this time, even I, had no idea what ‘The light’ actually was.

In a way I am grateful to him for showing a side of humanity that the Nacuu would probably never be able to understand. A manifestation of why we separated in the first place. The undying grasp of physical things and greed.

During one of our raids I came across a dying Nacuu who recognized me. This led to me to a path that ultimately showed me the truth. The truth about what Captain Nerva had done, and who I was. No, what I was.

I was eventually reunited with The Nacuu, and shown what my destiny as ‘The light’ was. Try imagining getting served that amount of responsibility as a young teenager. I mean, as far as I was concerned, I was just like any other teenage boy. I had no training, no powers. And now all of a sudden I had to save the world?! The Nacuu took me in and showed me the way. Eventually I was able to traverse the great barrier at will. and so my destiny to awaken humanity was set into motion.

I stopped ageing in my late twenties. That was strange. or at least it seemed that way from my perspective.

My mission was to participate in the darkest recesses of humanity, and use that darkness as a way to bring them back. I managed to save a few, but it felt like an impossible task. No matter what I tried, the darkness just grabbed ahold of me. Fear, for sure. But the fear of dying didn’t bother me, but rather, fear of humanity. The darkness that dwells within humans is unbearable to witness. The things they would do to each other and how they could treat one another… it was unbearable to see. It felt like there was no way out.

As the centuries passed, I went through the darkest times imaginable. I fought in war after war. Almost every major conflict you have heard of. In the end I had enough.

I know what the Nacuu wanted of me, but this felt more like a cruel joke than anything else. So I finally decided to stop. I lay down my weapons, and let the universe decide my fate. It was in that moment that it happened. I felt the cold blade run through me. I know it sounds strange, but it almost felt good. I mean the pain was there, but for the first time I actually felt alive. I wanted to live. Not for The Nacuu, or for humanity, but for myself. As if there was only me in the universe, and everything around me was a construct. I just had to hold on!


THE ROBOT

It really does seem like a blur when I try to remember the details. I know the Nacuu were watching every moment. Why they didn’t act, I don’t know. It wasn’t the first time I had gotten hurt where they stepped in. I think they had given up on me, just as I had on myself. Enough was enough.

I remember dragging myself through the streets as I felt life leaving my body. I had to hold on though. I could feel the Nacuu losing their connection to me as I was fading.

In my last moments I remembered the laboratory! One of my dearest friends was a doctor there. It wasn’t too far from where I was, and I knew she would be there, and so I did my best to get to her.

She had been working on a robotics project there, which all sounded quite interesting. Something about transferring memories from RNA or something. She claimed this is how consciousness is stored at a quantum level. …what do I know. I never understood what she was talking about, I figured if anyone could help me, she could!

I can’t really remember anything after that. But the next thing that happened was that I opened my eyes and saw my still, cold, dead body lying next to me. My connection to the Nacuu completely severed. I was trapped in one of those mechanical bodies that my friend had built. It was still me. I had all my same memories, same thoughts. The only difference was that it wasn’t my body.

I wasn’t angry at her. She did what she could to save my life, and for that I am grateful. There was nothing else she could have done for me at that moment. My human body was simply too far gone.


A NEW PLAN

She was kind enough to take me in and care for me as I was trying to regain myself.

She had recently had a baby girl, and the biological father had separated himself from their lives. So she was left to fend for both of them all by herself. And now she had to contend with me as well.

As the years went by, I grew closer to them, and took on a bit of a father/big brother role to her daughter. I mean, whatever you would call someone or something in my position at that time. I was her ‘robot’ I suppose. But she was as much mine as I was hers.

For the first time in my life I had found love. A family. Something I felt I could belong to. How ironic that the first time I truly felt alive, was when I was trapped in a mechanical body. Nothing was going to take that away from me …or so I thought.

Although I wasn’t able to enter Nowhereland consciously since I had gotten trapped in a mechanical body, I had a dream once about a deadly cloud that would sweep up humanity within itself. I saw the Island in my dream. The same Island that I had visited centuries before in my quest to figure out who I was. I also saw the Nacuu there, and a ritual where they created the cloud in order to unleash it upon the world. When I awoke, I knew that I had to go there again to find answers.

and so I made my way to the Island and found the cave that I had found so many years prior. It was still there. Hidden in plain sight. On entering I touched the stone in the cave, just like I had centuries before, and had a vision of the future, once again.

I saw the cloud sweeping over all of humanity. pulling their souls into it one by one. Forcibly removing them from the physical realm. I also saw what I had to do. I saw the plans for a ship I had to build in order to avoid it. I saw myself escaping with my adopted family, and bringing them to safety off-world.

The first thing I did when I got back, was to begin the construction of that ship. I chose to keep it secret in the garage in the beginning, but when I saw the the cloud had become a reality, I knew I had to tell them. We had to get off-world as soon as possible.

Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the ship on time, and the cloud eventually made it to us and took them away from me. I buried their lifeless bodies in the garden, where we had so many wonderful memories.

I can’t even put into words how it felt. I lost everything. Even the loss of the will to exist seemed too much of a burden to carry. I was too spent to be sad, too worn to be tired. I felt like a wave in the ocean with nowhere to go. But I knew I had to move on. I had to do it for them.

This was the consequence of failing, I thought. Failing at my destiny as ‘the light’. I suppose this was the aftermath of The Nacuu losing me. Creating a cloud to take each human by force. One by one. Now that I wasn’t going to fulfil what they had set me in this world to do. Maybe it was all just a dream. All I knew was that I needed to get off this world, and so I did.

I had three seeds with me. One to represent each one of us, and with it I would spread life far away from this awful place.


RAINDROPS

I have been here on my little rock since. The flower seeds have come and gone, and life has resumed in the cosmos. I am all alone, and I don’t know how long I will last here. I can see the cloud in the distance. It seems it has followed me here. Why am I not surprised. The cosmos is but another corner of the universe where space is of no consequence.

And so I sit here and look at the heavens, and the raindrops that fall from the sky, they get me high.

I’d better get out of here while I still can. oh gosh, here comes the cloud …wait a second. I see something in the cloud!!! is that them?…