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The Clearing at the End of the Path-- Chapter Two and Three by William Hrdina


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After requiring Ben to fill out seven different forms Alice led him down a long hallway to a room marked 532. Inside was a sparsely decorated room with a desk and an elaborate headset and gloves. Other rooms had full body suits, but Ben wasn't able to afford such fancy extras. Alice showed him to the chair and helped Ben put the helmet on his head and the gloves on his hands. The wires came together into a bundle and went through the floor. There they linked to a larger network inside a massive mainframe taking up the entire 15th floor of the building.
Feeling impatient and nervous Ben waited for Virtual Reality helmet to be activated. There was a soft beep in his left ear and suddenly he was standing in a hallway with a single door. Taking a deep breath Ben knocked.

Chapter 3

Molly Ainsley burst back into consciousness like she'd been woken from a deep sleep by an ice-cold bucket of water. All at once she was awake. She knew she was alive, but she didn't yet know who she was. The computer was still processing the memories. Her sense of inhabiting a body hadn't returned yet either. For the time being Molly was only a disembodied awareness of a massive white void that surrounded her seemingly for eternity. It was terrifying in a purely existential sense. Molly didn't experience the corresponding increase in blood pressure and heart rate, the flooding of her muscles with adrenaline to facilitate her ability to run from danger. There was only pure terror and empty white totality.
Molly let out a mouth-less scream.
The words "Don't Panic." Suddenly flashed across the entirety of what Molly now realized was her perception. The words hung in the air in front of her perception until her silent screams tapered off.
As the computer did its work, things began to come back to Molly. She remembered dying. The memory of it was hazy, like a bad dream. The only detail she could recall clearly was the moment of total panic when she realized her body wasn't going to take another breath. It was done living and it didn't care what her consciousness thought about it. The machine was kicking out the ghost once and for all. She remembered feeling foolish for thinking her mind and her body were partners, when in fact they were reluctant allies at best.
A new message appeared in the whiteness. "Your room will be ready in 5-4-3-2-1."
The room appeared all around her, wrapping her in its familiarity. Along with the perception of the room came with the perception of her body. The first thing she was aware of was the feeling of the carpet between her toes. Then the slight chill of the air and the faint omnipresent un-named smell that was associated with all hotel rooms from the fanciest suite to the Motel 6. It smelled... of multitudes.
Regardless, it was a vast improvement over the white eternity. Molly looked around with curiosity. She remembered seeing this room before. With her husband Ben. Suddenly where she was and what was happening all came back in a flood. She was inside the Reincarnation Industries computer.



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