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Into a World of Light

By Richard Willis Reed

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CHAPTER 1



When Aurora left class Friday evening to grab dinner, she had no idea she was being followed by a man from another planet.

When she paid for the jar of peanut butter and loaf of bread at the grocery store, she had no idea interplanetary travel was possible.

When she placed the two items into a plastic bag and headed back out into the cold night, she had no idea within twelve hours she would be on Mars.

All she knew at that moment was that she was failing college, and if she lost her scholarship she would get kicked out of her dorm and have nowhere to go. But before any of that may or may not happen, she was going to be involved in the following interplanetary events that she did not ask to be a part of.

Grocery bag in hand and backpack slung over one shoulder, Aurora headed down the sloped street that led back to the Greenwood University dorms in the heart of Providence, Rhode Island. The man from another planet followed at a distance.
The gray, winter sky had turned black, and the evening air had gotten colder. The fierce wind bit at her skin, and her eyes stung. The first glistening snowflakes fell from the dark sky and the icy road shone like a river. Cars barreled through yellow lights and pedestrians crowded the crosswalks. The warm lights from the shop windows painted the sidewalks yellow, and patrons hustled in and out of stores, trying to scratch a few more items off their Christmas shopping lists.

The city was bustling with life right before her eyes. And regardless of how she felt, or how terrible things had turned out, one thing was abundantly clear: life in this world would go on.

With or without her.

She sighed. Her final class had ended an hour ago, and not a moment too soon. For the next three weeks, she was free from the constant barrage of stress that the Ivy League tended to dish out in liberal doses. She wouldn’t know if she would be able to return next semester until her professors posted her final grades, and she was sure they would be as dismal as she was expecting.

She could hardly be blamed though. It had been such a rough year, and there’s no pause button in college for a weary and anguished heart. The summer had been a blur of funeral arrangements, endless paperwork, meet-and-greets, the burials, and grieving in solitude. All while still somehow trying to get her affairs in order for her first year of college. All while still somehow trying to care to do anything at all ever again…

She pulled a picture out of her wallet. Father. Mother. Child. All grinning ear to ear. The trio stood beside a lumpy snowman the morning after a blizzard had dropped almost four feet on them. She thought that she had belonged to them, but, like most children, she didn’t know that they had actually belonged to her.
The tears ran warm down her cold cheeks. And then it happened. She was used to it by now, but it didn’t make the attacks any less debilitating.

Her head started to spin, and her throat closed as the darkness descended upon her. Through her blurred vision she saw a bench nearby and stumbled toward it, dropping her grocery bag in the snow. Her backpack slid off her shoulder. She sat down and put her head in her hands, violently gasping for air. The cold air was like knives streaming into her lungs, but she had to get it together.

Breathe, Aurora. Breathe…

In…

Out…

In…

Out…

Breathe…

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there like that. When she came back around, her fingers and toes were numb. She shouldn’t have been out there with temperatures across New England dipping down into the single digits that night. But she couldn’t get herself to move. To care.

The man from another planet was getting closer, a loud jingling coming from his body. Aurora, still lost in her thoughts, didn’t see him. All she could see in her mind’s eye was the two caskets being lowered with leather pulleys into the dirt a mere six months ago.

She missed her mother and father terribly. She wished so badly that she had a sibling – a sister especially – with whom she could grieve with, so she didn’t have to mourn alone. And she would have had one, but some babies never quite make it here…

But that was a long time ago. Now, she had to contend with the possibility of losing her scholarship. She thought with a fair amount of humiliation how she couldn’t even survive her first semester of college without her parents. And if she did lose her scholarship, she would get kicked out of her dorm as well. And where would she go? Who did she know that she could stay with? The lease on the apartment where she’d lived with her parents for many years was voided months ago. Some other family called it home now. There was nowhere to turn. The painful truth was hard to accept, but it was the truth: She was actually going to be homeless. The thought made her tremble with fear. She would soon be literally living on the streets.

What happened to her life? How did things spiral out of control so quickly? And why had it all happened? Why was she forced to endure this misery? Her parents had always told her to pray and God would hear her, answer her, help her… where was He?

For what had to be the thousandth time, she journeyed in her mind back to what her physics professor had told her and sighed with a weary acceptance not often seen in a young lady of only eighteen. Maybe she had been a fool. Maybe she was wrong about everything. Everything she’d been taught, everything she’d believed. If God was so loving, why would He take her parents away from her? Professor Murdoch had asked her this question, not in a mocking or derogatory way, but with great sincerity. To him, these two senseless deaths that had left her an orphan just confirmed his worldview: there was no loving God.

She sighed again, and it was there, at that moment, as she sat on that icy bench reflecting on everything, Aurora simply just stopped caring. She ran her fingers through her hair and quietly sobbed. Everything was pointless. Life was pointless. Useless. Meaningless. And she wanted nothing to do with it anymore.
This was usually how it happened when people finally succumbed to despair. There was rarely ever a dramatic breakdown. All at once your heart just shatters in silence, without a single observable trace of the overwhelming defeat and resignation you feel within. Perhaps she would just leave the university and go get a big girl job and just wait life out until she grew old and she, too, inevitably died. And, honestly, what was the point in waiting to get old for her life to end? So she could endure another sixty years of living with this misery? Why not just end it all now…?

Her morbid thoughts were interrupted as the rhythmic jingling drew closer. She wiped her eyes on her gloves and looked up as a man sat beside her. He was an unusually large man, both tall and wide, who wore a gray robe that seemed to be made of small bits of shiny metal that clinked together as he moved. He had silver hair and his face was full of long wrinkles, some going the entire length of his face. Even for Providence, a city that prided itself on being weird, the man looked very out of place.

“Don’t worry,” he said.

Aurora’s eyes penetrated him. “I’m sorry?”

The wrinkled man turned to face her. “My dear young lady, don’t worry. You have so much greatness in your future. Don’t succumb to the despair. Especially now that you’ve come so far.”

Aurora’s stomach knotted. Any remnant of the panic attack was now officially gone. She was just about to bolt when the man held his hand up.

“I don’t mean to unnerve you, Aurora, I just wanted –”

“How do you know my name?” Aurora asked, as unnerved as she could possibly be.
The man pulled a cigar out from somewhere in his jingling coat. He lit it with a match and took a few puffs.

“I’ve really grown to like these things.” He turned to Aurora and smiled. “But something this enjoyable couldn’t possibly be good for you though, right? At least not in this world!”

He laughed loudly, a warm, jovial laughter that echoed down the city block. He took another puff.

“You know, some people think they have it all figured out,” he said, gazing with amusement at the panic-stricken, last-minute shoppers scurrying up and down the street. “They think they have all the answers. But it’s impossible for any human to have all the answers. The human brain couldn’t stand the weight of the knowledge of the universe. So the very few pieces of that puzzle that have miraculously been discovered are not the answers. They are merely the underground pipes. And, of course, what’s underground is of no interest to anyone. The real prize is what the pipes serve above ground for all to see and enjoy: the beautiful Edwardian mansion! Yes, the mansion is the real prize, the real truth, what we really want! Yet you humans have settled for pipes in the muck…”

“‘You humans’?” Aurora stuttered.

“Yes, precisely,” the man said, a fresh gust of icy wind swirling through his silver hair.

Aurora’s pulse pounded in her ears. She could definitely feel her hands and feet now.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And how do you know my name?”

“I am Mr. Wallace Mercury. You can call me Mr. Mercury, or even Wallace, if you like.” He held his hand out and smiled. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Aurora.”

Aurora had a deep-seated fear of being abducted that only eighteen years’ worth of Lifetime movies could give you, and she had no interest in seeing how the rest of this would play out. She slung her backpack over her tired shoulders and stood up.

“I must give you something before you go, Aurora,” the man said. He reached into his jingling pocket and revealed a white envelope. “This is it. This is the key to the answers you’ve been waiting for and the healing you’ve yearned for so deeply. Please, take it. I will never bother you again if you don’t want me to. But please take it.”

Aurora wasn’t sure why, but she was compelled to know what was in the envelope. She snatched the envelope from his hand and turned and rushed down the sidewalk so fast that she was almost out of earshot when she heard his voice call out,
“Follow the coin if you wish to join us!”

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