The vine along the wall hung above invasive grass protruding through the cement under Karina’s feet. Thick shadows clung to the alley’s corridor. As gold flakes of a crystalized substance relaxed atop the overgrown weeds like morning dew. Unlike dust particles associated with pollen, this material reminded Karina of clusters of crusted over honey.
She walked along the dark, narrow path. A trail of grass matted down from constant use guided her forward. She felt like an explorer heading into the depths of an unknown country. One where previous travelers thought to be a myth. Found it but failed to return and share the good news or present the lost treasure to their loved ones.
The golden mini clusters popped under her feet, wheezing out pockets of air as she moved. They sounded like bubble wrap being trampled under a toddler’s toes. A brief curiosity crossed her mind — what sound this substance would’ve made if the grenade sized cluster she saw in the hands of the stranger earlier this morning had been crushed? Then she guessed it probably wouldn’t just make a sound at all. And cut off the moment of wonder before it turned to worry with a shake of her head and moved on.
Childlike laughter chimed between the walls of her skull. Karina’s eyes bounced around, searching for a kid hiding in the shadows. But deep down, she had a sense that no one was there.
This gold crust feeding the plants despite the Conversion Signal is fertilizing lost corners in my mind too, Karina thought. The loosening grip of the E.I.E. not only brought self-reflection but also retrospection, as Karina listened with ears attached to the human spirit and found a memory.
Pre-Conversion, Karina found herself at work on a Sunday. Already stressed, weight was added to the heavy task at hand, because of an urgent request made by her loving parents over the phone.
“Por favor, Karina. Your dad is taking me to one of those lunches on the ferry and we can’t be late. Can you please pick up your brother?” Annabelle, Karina’s mother, asked softly in a persuasive cadence.
Moments of silence separated mother and daughter. While Karina considered the magnitude of the request. Labels on her scales read matters of life and patience rather than life and death. In order to go pick her younger brother up from a play rehearsal at the church her parents attended. The thought of unconditional love being put to the test while at the doorsteps of a personal breakthrough almost caused Karina to chuckle aloud in a sarcastic panic.
“…There’s supposed to be a live band there, too. Oh, I’m so excited.” Annabelle continued through the silence. Lathering on sweetener to guide her daughter towards the proper answer.
“Sure mom, I’ll pick him up when I leave for lunch though.” Karina responded with the phone pressed against her ear as she looked through the lens of a microscope. “So I may be early or late, depending on how long that rehearsal is. And he’s coming back to work with me until I decide to leave.”
“Oh, that’s perfect. Stop and grab him a burger and some fries. He’ll love that! Thanks again mi amor.”
Karina rolled her eyes, silently telegraphing objections across the phone line.
“I can go for a burger and fries myself,” Karina answered, feigning a smile before the exchange of the mutual Love you’s that ended the call.
The rest of that day in the past played in her head as she moved along the bush covered path. Sparkles from the golden mineral frosted atop the plants danced under the sun. Reminiscent of the shimmer radiating from her brother’s face while running down the church steps. Once he recognized who his chauffeur turned out to be as a sleek black BMW pulled into the pickup lane.
“Can we go see a movie?!” Javier blurted out in excitement before he settled in the backseat wearing an ocean blue Oxford and khakis. After fastening his seatbelt, his legs fluttered and twisted above the car floor, waiting for an answer.
“Sorry Jellybean, sis has work to do. We can grab a burger from Patty’s first, though.” Karina said, watching her little brother’s face shift from the rearview mirror. Ignoring the rejection, the smile engraved on his face was upheld by the sound of the nickname given to him by his sister. Which acknowledged how he looked in the bright colors of his wardrobe. And the implication of his favorite meal — Patty’s Burgers & Fries.
“Can I get a large Patty Burger and chilly fries? Mom and dad always says that’s too much food.” Javier asked, swinging his feet back and forth.
“You can get whatever you want, kid. Just don’t spill it.” Karina said, watching his smile through the rearview one more time. “So what play were y’all rehearsing?” Karina asked, filling the silence in-between their destinations.
“One for Easter.” Javier answered, watching the road pass from his window.
“That shouldn’t take long, right? It’s when Jesus dies, isn’t it?” Karina asked, with a sarcastic glazed memory freed from her parent’s religion and the Sunday school teachings that came with it.
Javier shifted his head, locking eyes with Karina from the rearview at a red light. “Well, that’s the point of the play. He didn’t stay dead.”
Karina smiled, an ignorant response sprouted on the tip of her tongue — Prove it. But she didn’t feel the need to let her seasoned skepticism (which led her into her profession) smash her brother’s childlike faith into pieces. So she kept quiet.
Javier continued with an, as a matter of fact, tone commonly associated with prepubescent ignorance. “I’m doubting Thomas in the play. The disciple that needed to see the holes in Jesus’ hands and feet to believe.” He paused for a moment, then sat up in his seat. Karina felt that if he could, he would be looking her dead in the eyes. “Did you know Earth came pre-loaded with its own resurrection protocols? I mean, in plants and humans?”
Of course she knew. She spent years of schooling, accumulating debt just to find out.
“We have cells in us that can make organs on command! Imagine if we could control them with our minds — like if we had enough faith and discipline to flip on the switch wherever they are needed. The same way a plant grows a new leaf where the old one broke off, it’s cool to think a resurrection could happen the same way.” He finished with a smile highlighting his final adult tooth growing in and slid back into the seat, pulling his V.T.E. 15 Pro phone from his pocket to entertain himself the rest of the way.
At the Patty’s Burgers drive thru, Karina sat in awe admiring her brother’s childlike faith with a smirk and shake of her head. She mimic’d her past response in the present moment while walking down the alley filled with overgrowth. Disbelief held her tongue and twisted her head from side to side. Doubt painted a fragile smile on her face — one put there solely to defend the crumbling facade of her current reality. At the end of the alley, it became clear to Karina why she was drawn to this place.
That fateful conversation featuring Javier’s enlightened imagination was the catalyst Karina needed for a breakthrough discovery she was researching at her job. She ruminated over the fact that all life on Earth was encoded with its own resurrection protocols. Hurt things don’t have to stay hurt and dead things could live again. Javier had to order for her when they went to Patty’s Burgers & Fries drive-through (a #2 with loaded fries. Her favorite). As she contemplated the stem cells responsible for regenerating the roots of plants below ground and their counterparts programmed within humans.
“Whoaaa,you work here?” Javier had said, as an echo of the past continued to play in Karina’s head. While her eyes widened with wonder upon seeing her former place of employment for the first time in ten years.
The Axiom Research Agency.
A blackened glass cathedral structure covered with vines and overgrown weeds, stood like an abandoned castle. Certainly a long-lost wonder of the world. A single entrance remained uncovered, unlike the other six or so doors encased behind a decade’s worth of unkept branches. But the doorway looked propped open from where Karina stood at the bottom of the stairway.
“What do you do?” Javier asked, as he stuffed his mouth with a French-fry following his sister up the stairs. His footsteps in the past echoed with Karina’s, who cracked the leaves underfoot while she made her way upward.
“Come on. I’ll show you.” Karina mouthed to herself in the current moment, reciting the forgotten lines from her scripted past.
She found herself at the rusted doorway. Vines decorated around the handle as padding hinted that this abandoned monolith may be a home to one or many. Karina wasn’t able to detach from her past pulling her forward. The whispers from a day lived long ago continued through Karina’s head as she crossed the threshold.
“This place is sooooooo coooool.” Javier muffled with wonder, while piling French fries in his mouth.
Back then, the lobby of the Axiom Research Agency was laced with pristine marble floors. A central area filled with many objects encased within glass displays like a museum. Enlarged fruit such as grapes and oranges the sizes of basketballs. Tennis shoes with the soles corroded supposedly from the owner running up to 60mph on the highway. An undying prayer plant, separated from water whose roots continued to grow and sway.
Now, the lobby was covered in layers of dust. Shadows stretched across the room like blackened fingers from a giant as the silhouetted vines draped over the glass panels above.
“This right here is called the Axiom Museum. It’s where some of the weird of Cardinal-Wood gets put on display. What grade are you in now?” Karina asked, weaving around the display cases.
“6th.”
“The schools in the county take the 7th graders on field trips here all the time. At least that’s when I think they show up. All kids look the same age after 5 til 15. You probably got one more year for the full tour,” Karina answered, stopping at an elevator. She pressed the call button to go to the lower levels and notice a brief smear of disappointment rub across Javier’s face. “You know, I can bring you to work one day in the next two weeks and give you a tour myself. I just have to ask mom and dad first.”
Javier’s excitement quickly returned as creases from his smile puffed up his cheeks. “Really?!”
“Yea, why not? It will be fun.”
Footprints other than Karina’s were etched into the dust covered floor. They marched past the out-of-order elevator towards a staircase by its side going downward. She followed them as the last rays of light from above were engulfed by the shadows. Until a few steps into the stairwell revealed legacy V.T.E. portable lights hanging from the wall. A battery powered light source, circular in appearance and large as a hand, hung ready to guide her descent.
Karina’s returning memories evolved — growing from tiny separate embers into a connected wall of fire. Why’s overlapped with when’s. As she descended the stairwell, a special place in her heart ignited into an inferno.
Javier’s resurrection thesis made it all click. Once she brought him down to her lab all those years ago.
“I’m researching a new mineral we discovered in Cardinal-Wood.” Karina said, connecting thoughts out loud to Javier as the elevator reached the basement level of the A.R.A. The urgency or the anxiety of the task at hand returned at the buzz of the elevator. The time she could’ve spent solving her issue was spent ordering burgers and talking about resurrection theory—
“Resurrection.” Karina said, out loud at the bottom of the staircase. A final portable light, positioned over the exit, beamed on her face.
“Its base form, the Axiom particle…” Karina’s past continued to echo as she entered the remains of the A.R.A. lab. “…was discovered decades ago.”
“You know they teach us this in school, right? How the discovery of the Axiom particle changed the world. The once unknown catalyst of creation. Blah blah blah.” Javier jested, tossing his empty bag of fries in the trash. “But what about this new stuff?”
Memories and the present moment folded on-top of each other like patterns of a quilt’s fabric stitched together by time and space.
Karina weaved around the A.R.A. lab, one foot seated on the dusty, dimly lit tile illuminated by the scattered portable lights around the room. The other foot trailing along the past’s pristine floor. White lights illuminating the room matched the excitement radiating from Javier’s eyes as he followed behind.
“The Axiom Particle is created the moment where the dual properties of light in its separate particle and wave forms intersect.” Karina whispered to herself—continuing the explanation Javier’s past self interrupted while creeping through the dimly lit A.R.A. laboratory. Pieces of paper imprinted with scribbles of Karina’s handwriting, laid unfolded and scattered across tables in the room.
Her notes.
“You see? This is the first time we get to observe properties of the Axiom Particle above the atomic level. And you gave me a great baseline on where to start.”
“Really? How?” Javier asked, distracted with awe by the beeps buzzing from the various machines and monitors.
“Resurrection. It is built in the very fabric of every atom of all things. From plants to humans. Stem cell research can confirm that for ya. What if the Axiom Particle is the catalyst of all existence? With all the weird common to Cardinal-Wood, the constant is that it all can be explained as an ‘Exaggeration of Life’. And if you start the Axiom theory there, then what the Axiom Mineral is capable of is limitless.”
In the cold dark moment of the now, standing in the shadows of the abandoned A.R.A. lab, Karina finally deciphered the message her past transmitted forward. Energized by the golden glow of the Axiom minerals spread throughout the courtyard, electromagnetically vibrating in tune with the pulse of her thoughts and pump of her heart. She found herself resurrected from her own converted grave, right in the middle of the scientific breakthrough she made ten years prior just before The Conversion. Just before the E.I.E. stole her identity.
A sudden shift behind her knocked a stack of papers to the floor.
Karina turned around, startled to see movement in the shadows. A figure forming out of the dark corner.
“You made it, sis. You’re home now.” Javier said, stepping forward into the glow of the portable lights.
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