The Ultraviolet Spectrum

I set my mind to it and began to register and collect all the sounds and sights around me as if they were tiny bits of sensory information that would culminate in my body and mind leading to the creation of an engineered conscious experience. It took me six days of doing this every chance I got and then it happened.

I awoke kicking the lid off a coffin distinctly aware that I was in two places at one time. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was home in bed sleeping but I was also here acting and aware. I launched myself up out of the coffin knocking the lid to the ground off causing lots of noise. I did not startle in the least an old woman who stood waiting by the door with a most solemn look of longing. Next to her was a large slab of cement. Right next to and a bit below the slab of cement was a long shelf filled with jars of all different sizes. The jars were filled with opaque substances. It was dark and the only light coming into the tiny room came from the window where the woman was standing. I scrambled out of the sarcophagus and approached the old lady. She seemed oblivious to my presence. I thought she’d lost her mind. As I got closer to the old woman, I noticed she was a lot younger than I had previously thought. She couldn’t be a day over forty. Before I had a chance to sum up the situation the front door of the little hut or dark cave burst open and a man, woman and small girl came rushing in. The man was carrying a corpse, which he quickly laid on a stone slab that took up most of the space in the room. Suddenly the old lady moved with the gait of a twenty-nine year old.

I was shocked by her steadfastness and concentration. Initially she seemed old, run down and perhaps sixty years old. As I watched her move, I could plainly see that she was young, strong and vital but she was also emaciated. Her skin was dark from tragedy and her eyes were filled with dread. The look in her bulging eyes said that these were her last days. Her hair was grey and covered with some kind ragged cloth.

With expert skill, she pulled what seemed to be ointments, herbs, and different things from the jars surrounding the table and engaged herself in what I could easily perceive to be an ancient ritual for bringing the corpse back to life. The body didn’t even seem to be human. It was more of a kind of vegetable man or somebody in a rubber suit. I wasn’t sure if the ointments were going to open the rubber suit or if the creature was still alive. Its skin was black and dried like a prune. Nothing else about the figure seemed apparent to me. Before I had time to question what was happening I found myself out on the street. It was deserted and it was nighttime. Shops lined the street up and down. Nothing was unusual except for an incredible glow coming from the streetlight. As I got closer to the incredible glow, I noticed that the glow wasn't a light it was some kind of object, some kind of metallic gold orbish glob. I looked down the street and every seven to eight feet a light pole shone with one of these golden amorphous orbs. The most apparent thing about the orb was that it radiated everything that was good. I knew instantly that the people whose house I woke up in fought to keep their city or town the way it was. They loved it here. They fought for everything that was good. The goodness that radiated from the streetlamp was astounding. I'd never seen any kind of substance in my life that provoked such an intense feelings for God and all that was good. It was odd because the glow of the orb really had a strong influence on me but I knew intellectually that it was coming from the substance the object was made of and not so much the object itself. I looked at the orb again and was filled with the knowledge that it was everything that was good and Godly. I was filled with mirth at its appearance and sight and I found myself walking along the street amused at how these powerful objects just hung out in the open for anyone to steal or take or borrow and yet no one disturbed them. They were engrained unnoticed features of their everyday life.

I kept walking down the street. Slowly the buildings on my right began to look darker and they took on a more malevolent shape and quite surprisingly hanging from their streetlights was a color or hue that I have never witnessed before in my life. The hue could only be described as Ultraviolet. And whatever it was made of was nothing like anything I've ever seen. But there was one damn thing that I knew for sure when I looked at it. That substance radiated pure evil. It wasn't God Evil or Satan Evil it was as if the substance itself emitted some kind of radiation that affected the viewer's emotional state. The object's color was the most peculiar thing I'd ever seen. The material of the object wasn’t plastic, it wasn’t paper, and it wasn’t even remotely close to the golden orbish Godly substance I’d just found. I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the kind of substance the object was made of. But I knew the object itself made me feel the way I did. It dawned on me that whatever material the objects were made of didn't exist in our periodic table. They weren't made of plastic, metal, or any kind of organic material but were obviously fashioned by hand or machine. Peculiarly, I paused and thought for moment realizing that this situation had never happened to me before. I tried to place the substance; it’s color and hue into something I could identify. But for the life of me, I couldn't place the material into any kind of category that is known.

A huge sadness washed over me as I realized by the wear and tear on the buildings, the age of the street and the fact that such precious materials hung out in the open for anyone to take down, hide or throwaway that this world, this culture, had been locked in a war that had easily lasted a thousand years. Both sides had collected a precious material that they must have fiercely believed was a deeply factual representation of who they were. But now as the war had consumed both sides and engaged them into bizarre culture rituals that had survived by being passed down for generations they seemed to have lost track of the fact that the need to possess these objects started their wars.

My mood suddenly changed and I began to find it deeply humorous that each side had forgotten the source and the influence of the powerful substances that were now merely decorations that hung on street poles. Then I was furious and wanted to begin to end the war.

I demanded an investigation. I decided to stroll through the "evil" streets to find the "evil" castle and see if there were huge amounts of this material horded by some fellowship of "evil." But before I could take two steps in that direction, I was caught unaware. I found myself jumping out of the back of a jeep like vehicle still laughing from the absurd notion of two cultures allowing their entire world view to be controlled by two very opposite substances.

The young man and his, I assume, wife and their child were looking at me with panic and fear in their eyes. I was immediately concerned with myself and suddenly heard a barking sound to my right. I turned and in horror saw a shiny hollow metallic dog radiating the ultraviolet hue from his mouth and violently charging me. I immediately adopted a defensive pose for facing an opponent but it was too late. Fear overwhelmed me and I noticed an inability to remember the form correctly. In the quickest second imaginable, I managed to adopt a stauncher fighting pose and I jumped to strike the dog with one of the lamest leg kicks in the world. My fear was too great. The very next moment I found myself awake in my bed with the full realization that I'd just engineered a conscious experience.

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