The Barrier by Femi Salami

Wunmi lay on a padded gurney in a brightly lit, enclosed chamber. The air hummed with the building charge of the Quantum Drift Array. It was technology born of human desperation two centuries ago, when we learned we were prisoners in our own solar system. A barrier, an impenetrable wall at the edge of the heliosphere, destroyed every physical probe sent to breach it. Humanity’s grand exodus was over before it began.

But in that defeat, a greater truth was uncovered. We existed in the Physical Realm, a mere basement of existence. Outside the barrier lay the Astral Plane, a vast, psychic ocean where consciousness was the only reality, and the laws of physics were merely suggestions. The Quantum Drift was our periscope into that infinite sea.

“Initiating consciousness separation in three… two… one…”

A sensation of being unplugged, then a dizzying, weightless lurch. Wunmi felt her awareness detach from the solid anchor of her body. On the monitors in the control centre, her physical vitals remained stable, while a new, shimmering signal—her quantum consciousness—blinked into existence. She was a ghost in the machine, a thought given purpose.

She willed herself forward, and her consciousness drifted, accelerating until the chamber, the base, the whole city became a blur of light below her. She shot upwards, through the atmosphere, past the orbit of the moon, towards the edge of the known. In mere seconds, she was there.

The Barrier.

It wasn’t a wall of rock or energy, but a shimmering, nebulous film, a cosmic kaleidoscope of colours that had no name. It was beautiful and terrifying. As her whitish, shimmering ball of quantum energy touched its surface, it rippled, accepting her. For a conscious mind, it was a doorway. For anything physical, it was absolute annihilation.

She crossed over.

The transition was, as always, a shock that never dulled. The sterile silence of space was replaced by a symphony of pure sensation. The Astral Plane wasn’t a place one saw, but one felt. It was a realm of thought and emotion given form. Colours swirled with meaning, sounds had texture, and light carried emotion. Wunmi’s consciousness, no longer a mere ball of energy, coalesced, pulling the psychic substance of the plane around her until she stood—or felt like she stood—in her own familiar human form. Here, her will was her body.

Femi Salami is a black male story writer based in Lagos, Nigeria. He loves football (soccer), movies and Enya.

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