Chroma: Light Being Human

CHROMA

Light Being Human

By Denele Campbell

Chroma

by Denele Campbell

Copyright 2016 by Denele Campbell

Cover Credit: © Egorr | Dreamstime.com - Beautiful Alien Lady Photo

© Almir1968 | Dreamstime.com - Universe: Earth And Sun Photo

Chroma is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including the information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

"If you want to find the secrets of the universe,

think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."

- Nikola Tesla

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

1Chapter 1

Several entities manipulate dials and adjust various screens and mechanisms. The green glow of instrumentation reflects on their thin metallic arms and black sensory lens. Outside, visible through a wide expanse of glass that spreads above the console, the curve of the ship’s upper hull shines faintly silver as we pass a nearby sun, a reflection that repeats in luminous arcs along the huge outer ring as it revolves around the ship. Our vessel emits its own light, a faint glow of pink and yellow, pastel blue and green. The pale kaleidoscope of color changes as the ring rotates. A faint jingling sound emanates from the ring.

The crystal from which we flow stands in the midst of the upper deck, mounted at the heart of an elegant curving focular. The metal device reaches up to a clear dome in the ceiling, the portal through which our photons flow. At the heart of the focular, the tall crystal pulses with light. Each facet sparks with color, throwing my existence—the existence of us all—into the cabin.

You can’t imagine seeing all this at once. Without any understanding. I can’t imagine it either, not any more. It’s been too long. What’s left for me now, for any of us in Light, is the faint dying away of sound from a bell long after it’s been struck.

What lingers more clearly is the question ‘why’? I’ve come up with countless answers, but my cigarette has gone out. Its ashes and butt have already been incorporated into the cabin’s refuse bin. What can I say? I always want to smoke. It calms me.

~~~

We were so innocent then. None of us knew how long we’d been traveling or even that we were. I speak for us all because back then, we were One.

We’d been speeding through the soup of space-time. It could be said that we didn’t move at all, that we were in all places at once, and that would have been closer to the actual physics of the situation. We understood so little.

As if we understand now. Get that straight. I can look back now and say, oh, yeah, this and that. But we blew into this excruciating process without knowing anything. You’d think after all this time we’d have the answers. Everyone thinks we know everything. I’m telling this story because you need to understand—we don’t know.

At the time, we didn’t have human reference. Consider yourself lucky that I can use these terms. Otherwise, I’d have to present a symphony with flashing lights and you wouldn’t get it.

Please allow me to introduce us, the Aspects of Chroma. I’m of the electromagnetic range known as Indigo, and my frequency is of the musical tone B at the fourth octave of human perception, 493.883 Hertz. Call me B4. From me up the diatonic scale and across the visible spectrum are C Violet, D Red, E Orange, F Yellow, G Green, and A Blue, each like me with countless shades and sub-tones just as there are infinite fractions between the number one and the number two. These are my kinsmen and companions. Part of me, at least in the beginning.

Beginning? Again, that’s an amorphous concept. What we’ve learned so far is that our piercing column of white light, this stream of photons, originates somewhere past Sirius. The big star’s gravity bends our trajectory and slings us on a new path like a stone from a slingshot.

In the moment of our awakening, we existed as a refraction off the face of a doubly terminated clear quartz crystal, SiO4 tetrahedra. We broke into brilliant shapes of every color: red lines and blue spheres, violet spirals and yellow-orange loops, green and turquoise, russet and tan, swirling and sparkling, our voice a mighty chorus throbbing with the vibration of our existence.

This is the armchair quarterback version. Like I said, we didn’t know any of this. We just were. Ambulatory entities moved around us in a physical existence unlike ours. They could travel from place to place as discrete beings. Do things. Move things. I envied them.

Looking back, I’m amazed at how easy it was to take the next step. I can’t tell you when. We’re talking infinities of time, at least in human terms. And that’s how I’m trying to keep this, in human terms.

At a random moment, I the fourth octave of Indigo separated my wave of sound and light from the others. I clung to one of these ambulatory forms as it passed near the crystal. I had been part of the full sound of Chroma, a band of its electromagnetic spectra. Suddenly I wasn’t.

I admit it was a thrilling moment. That first taste of discrete existence riveted my attention. This physiognomy went places, did things. I went with it. Interacted. I became able to think and speak of things not previously known, concepts not known to us in One.

That was how it started.

~~~

I rode the Phiz, these gray physiognomies with their gleaming black eyes and dexterous fingers, around our contained metal vessel. On its shoulders, I dove deep into the belly of the ship where sleek engines chewed through harvested dark matter and thrust us ever onward. I swept along corridors to technical rooms where Phiz performed maintenance on each other and the ship’s devices. With the Phiz, I found that my suggestions resulted in certain responses so that when I wanted to see beyond a particular door, whichever Phiz I rode opened it. When I wanted to alter the direction of the ship so that it turned more toward the nearby nebulae or a particular galaxy, the Phiz manipulated the controls accordingly.

What pleasure I found in these interactions! The heady exercise of power, autonomy, control, adventure! The gratification of cause and effect, initiation and conclusion, hunger and satiety—I couldn’t get enough. How could one ever forget such things, once tasted?

My fellow Aspects twirled and tumbled in a constantly changing wash of rainbow hues and choirs of sound. Calculations of mathematics, rhymes of words and phrases, patterns of triangles, squares, octagons, words merging into other words that grew from combinations of letters, new meanings and ideas forming from old meanings and old ideas, scenes of color shifting constantly into different color—all of it poured out in a continuing stream, all of it made audible by the rush of sound, each tone carrying its own frequency and pitch, each color merging upward or downward into the next hue, each pitch sliding upward or downward through infinite frequencies.

Indigo posed our fateful question to the thought stream pulsing within our One: Could we have form as do the Phiz?

Immediately the texture of light in the room changed. Shades of color diminished until only the primary hue of each band remained. The wild disarray of sound subsided as sub-tones, flats and sharps and semi-notes aligned with their dominant pitches. One next to each other, each of the Aspects formed their primary hue of colored light in a single prismatic emission from the crystal face.

What would you have us do, B Indigo? asked D293.665 Red, surging in a beam of crimson. Will it be pleasurable?

What will form accomplish? A440 Blue said, his cobalt column intense. I admit to some interest in your idea, but I have no data that support this proposal.

No data, said the sphere of E329.628 Orange.

F369.994 Yellow rippled over the room, casting everything in golden brilliance. A challenging proposal, my dear B4, he said. I’ve seen you coming this. I’ve felt your excitement. Why would you change us?

Even separated from them as I had become in my questioning, I could not overcome the pull of our vibrational unity. But among them all, none had greater fundamental frequency with me than the energy of F369.994 and his fellow octaves of F sharp. For a moment, I couldn’t control my visceral response, an emission of sound that rang out beside his pitch in perfect intervals of fourths and fifths.

Such joy! Tremors of luxurious warmth swept along my wavelength. I wanted him always with me.

Don’t spoil this, Yellow. I wrested away, shivering in the rush of our harmonic joining. Think of what I ask.

His tone settled on one note. Do you know what you ask?

Surely we have other purpose than endless play, I said, resisting the urge to acknowledge his doubt. What do we know of our beginning? Where are we going? What is our purpose? Is this all there is?

None of them replied. Only the faintest choir of sound emanated from us.

What of this adjacent plane, these physical constructs that force us from One into many, that contain us and attend us? I said, swirling toward the crystal and the Phiz then laying my purple ribbon of light along the glass that separated our enclosed space from the streaming vista ahead. I couldn’t express, then or now, the swelling up I felt, the urgency pushing me. What are the natures of the bodies we pass, these suns and novas, the congregates?

The room remained abnormally silent with faint spikes of color flickering on the lustrous high ceiling. I couldn’t blame them for their reaction. Part of me remained in sync with them, stunned at my rebellion.

These are challenging observations, B4, Blue intoned.

Green flourished in chartreuse, emerald, lime, as octaves of G echoed. We could instruct the Phiz to such a task. I sense creative possibilities.

Yes, exactly, I said, my Indigo family growing more intense. How can we wait one more moment to explore?

Dearest B4, we have everything here, Violet C murmured. Existence in its purest form. We are One. Why would we want to disturb this with unknowns?

But we are no longer One… I said.

Theoretical questions, Violet, F Yellow said. Questioning within unity is not the same as chasing ideas on your own. What B4 proposes takes us outside anything we’ve known.

The risks of unknowns, statistically speaking…the odds are quite staggering that we would have any success in finding an equivalent amount of pleasure, if I respond to Red’s posed question, Orange said. She calculated, sending up waves of mathematical images to the upper deck walls. Drawing from Phiz data stores—they have no specific description of pleasure or any other subjective experience, but they do record a significant number of potentially damaging interactions between our containment here and various elements of the external environment. If we extrapolated that we, like the vessel around us, would also encounter a variety of similar interactions, we could assume that pleasure would not be the only feature of such a ‘physical’ experience.

A blind leap, it seems to me, Blue said. Why would we risk it? I believe Indigo’s ideas stem from disengagement from our union. We should be reminded—it’s been a long time since we acknowledged the primal energy of our source. A joining can’t be far off. Until the time when our One is reenergized, we should focus on discussion, perhaps expanding our theoretical analyses. We can generate ideas and experiences among us that are new and challenging—Orange alone has infinite sequences of formulae—without shifting the fundamental nature of our experience. We are, after all, physical in the sense that we exist in light and sound beyond the energy stream radiated at the grating. The possibilities...

And what of my offerings—spontaneous, organic... Green said.

Take my D, Red said. Tones seducing to the sharp, to the flat ...

The column of light swirled brighter. Choirs of sound pulsed the air and rose to the walls, to the high ceiling, until the shades of color painted the room in song. I saw their hesitation. I slipped away, allowing my bandwidth to drift into shadows. I don’t know what I expected. The old songs resonated through the conversation.

Whether my fellows agreed or not, whether Indigo might later suffer regret, I could not stop myself. I see now that my destiny would find outlet no matter what. Ironically, I understand it now in terms of the physical world. My fate advanced like a sudden rivulet of rainwater caught behind a clump of leaves and silt which pile up in a widening dam until, finding fresh course to its inevitable downhill destiny, the flood rushes around and through the obstacle.

~~~

Find us a world, I said to the Phiz, a physical realm rich with variety, a place where energy has long since partnered with matter, where we will see what we have never seen before. Gather the data, show me the risks.

The Phiz manipulated a few features of the control panel. The celdenthall shifted immediately and so did the direction and speed of the ship. I could barely contain my excitement. I sang out in all octaves of B, flared in multiple shades, careened between blue and red shifts of my light. Something within me felt satisfied in a way I had never anticipated, strife long ignored now eased.

I heard nothing from my fellow Phiz, but I felt Yellow’s energy beside me. Not questioning. Not demanding. Simply there.

In all our times, I have never felt satisfied that I conveyed to Yellow my profound gratitude for his companionship. He has said he’s long since forgiven me for any betrayals. Perhaps I have not forgiven myself.

The Nav Phiz, accustomed as it had become to my interactions, fed me data streaming through the sensors. Our interchanges merged in a constant dialogue. The thick rush of dark matter, the now-familiar cascade of distant stars, and the swirls of even more far-flung galaxies exploded outward, visible through the arc of windows at the front of the upper deck. Indigo light coated the green dials and panels and reflected across the eyes of the Phiz and over the inscrutable features of their faces. Data streamed through them, measurements of cells and osmosis and degeneration, the progress of gravity and reactions and erosion, all processes previously unimagined.

With my will channeled toward my favored Maint Phiz, its strange form rippled in the waves of my light as it factored information I required: the data of the Navs, the assessments of the Labs, the practical activity of the Maints. I called it Phiz Alpha as it stood before me, its black oval eyes reflecting my Indigo light in an unexpected intimacy. Together, we arrived at the upper deck where the Aspects whirled and played in constant harmony. Images formed as the panel instruments piled up scenes of rock and crustal shear, of cloud and movement of wind, microscopic function of bacterial nutrient movement, astonishing shapes and processes.

F369.994 Yellow formed beside me. You change us, he murmured, his saffron glow lingering against me. You don’t know the outcome.

I resisted the urge to fly into him and his golden wave. Counter his challenge. His energy always drew my attention, but now, oddly, his criticism eased my anxiety. Someone besides me considered the arena unfolding before us and weighed in with an opinion, even if opposing. My Indigo formed a standing wave.

"Do you know the outcome, F369.994? Do you resist out of fear?" My color swept against him. Oh, arrogance defined me in those early days.

We can argue, if you like, he said. I’m simply observing. I might admire your courage if I thought you made a considered decision. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?

Maybe if I had gone to him then, shared our harmonics for the familiar excitement, reveled in the ancient comfort he gave me, none of this long story would have happened. But his words pricked me to greater rebellion. Positions challenged become entrenched in defense.

The pursuit of meaning has begun. I won’t stop it, I said. It’s my nature to follow my intuition and pursue the unknown. But don’t be fearful, Golden One. My questions will be answered and my quest will then end. Then we will resume our way and it will be as before.

After a time, F369.994’s unspoken song answered me. I heard it inside, like I have felt his presence in all other times and places of my existence. It saddened me and intrigued me, and I went on as if I didn’t hear it.

But I did.

I hear it still.

We won’t be as before, he sang. What you have started will never end.

Chapter 2

Great watery deep, thick with liquid elements that rush and flow, ceaseless motion—oh, carry me! I Indigo of the fourth octave swept along in mid-depths, my purplish light spread into a flat ribbon, rising and falling with the currents. Eddies swirled alongside me as fish swam by, fish of wondrous color, of spectacular form. Long fingers of translucent green kelp marked the water’s motion as I leapt through tidal forces drawing me to land. I pushed ahead of the surge, my color trail sharpening in the bright shallows.

Torrents of sensation engulfed my experience of the planet’s seas. Swept to where the mouth of a river flooded into the greater body of water, to where the yield of the land joined the planet’s liquid mass, I dove with the stream of fresh flood as it rolled onto the sandy ocean bottom and tugged at the detritus. Swells billowed and ebbed. Crabs crept along the sea floor beside me, weightless. Bits of the forests and grasslands tumbled along in the flux, a protective cloud of weed root and silt to hide silver fingerlings and infant turtle. The graceful wings of a manta ray swept past, its mouth scooping up mussel, crab, and young fish.

For an age, Indigo traveled among them, sending to the other Aspects my collection of images which they could access or ignore, scenes of feeding, breeding, birth, and death. From them I heard nothing, no further complaints, no questions, no comment. Let them remain, I told myself. Their disengagement can’t diminish this enchantment. Zings of exuberant color flared from my wave as I coursed through the mighty oceans.

After some time, when the flux and flow of the systems, the formations, and the life forms had become more familiar to me, when I had seen the inner direction inherent in the many activities of each form, when I had become accustomed to the intense pleasure of my experience, new questions arose. These activities became almost meaningless acts, as perfunctory as our singing as One. All around me, creatures existed with more complete understanding of their purpose than I. They sought to feed, to reproduce, to protect their young.

We knew nothing of that.

Straining myself at the skin of the great manta ray, I tried to inhabit its form and direct it as I had directed the Phiz. I would experience its hunger and the satisfaction of food. I would know the twist of muscle as our wide wings rushed against the water, tantalizing, sensual. I lay along its smooth underside, my Indigo wave transparent in the rush of the dark green water. Here I was, B4, becoming part of the ray. I willed myself into his form, directed that we go deeper in the sea.

But the creature didn’t admit me. I didn’t merge with its smooth belly skin. There was no place for Indigo in the neural chamber, or the blood of his veins, or the chambers of his gut. I didn’t find myself in his muscle or the tissue of his wings. I could see every particle of its being but could not control it or know whatever pleasure or hunger it felt. The ray didn’t move as I willed it or respond in any way to my thought.

The failure of this concept saddened me.

I roamed the greater depths, riding among blue marlin, pompano, the great barracuda. Deeper still, I swam among dark hatchet fish and spiny eel. I trailed beside the red and blue oarfish, stretching my fading Indigo along its undulating, thirty-foot length. I hovered at the flashing red spots of the black dragonfish, my B tones wailing off into watery black depths. The creatures moved tirelessly in search of food, their conquests brutal and fulfilling, their lives only as long as their defenses allowed. What tension, what constant energy! I imagined their thought, considered their outlook. Yet even where red-hot lava boiled the water and bizarre tube worms undulated in the toxic chemistry of heat vents, nothing responded to my directives as had the Phiz. For another age, in search of a life form receptive to my quest, I rode the dark bottoms.

I admit that what I initially thought I wanted was not what I now desired. Disheartened by my failure, I reclaimed a position near the water’s surface where the planet’s sun warmed the waters. Life was more abundant here, food more plentiful. The water teemed with plankton and algae, brine shrimp and microorganisms. Larger fish of schooled around me, the shark, the tuna, the Cetacean. For another age, as the heavens raced overhead in mazes of cloud, in bright blue and sunshine and flashes of night, while the oceans breathed their surf onto beaches stilled in torpid heat, flooded in driving rain, where sand and shell pooled along the high tide lines, along the long coastlines of continents teeming with sound and industry of life in myriad form, I, the fourth octave of Indigo in the electromagnetic frequency of 7.5 x 10¹⁴ Hertz, rode with the life of the upper waters.

~~~

At some point not announced to me, A440 Blue saw promise in Cetacean and began his experiments. He credited his interest to all the data I sent streaming back to the ship. Thrilled with his participation, I began riding among the Cetacean. Their family groups played and fed together, leapt for air into the sunlight and the light of the moon. Their streamlined bodies ran swift and beautiful in the sparkling water. What would it be to exist in that form, knowing the breath of air, the taste of krill, and the sense of purpose that seemed to guide their lives?

Our shining saucer-shaped spacecraft settled in calm air over the vast western ocean. Its inner disc cycled sideways within the great outer ring as small gray Phiz opened the lower portal. With Transport Phiz on either side, a female Cetacean rose through the sky toward the ship, water streaming from her sleek body. Sunlight reflected off her smooth skin and sparkled in water droplets that fell back toward the sea below.

We centered in the prepared room—C261.626 Violet, A440 Blue, and most of the Indigo band: B61.735, B123.47, B246.94, even B7902.1. Our color surged and gleamed, resonating in minimum tones. Phiz Alpha observed with his great black eyes, waiting at the head of a long metal table. The female Cetacean rose through the portal in the floor, escorted into the high white room. Other Phiz hurried around her, reacting to my sense of urgency that this process be quick and easy for her.

The great mammal lay heaving on the table, its skin moist and rubbery against the steel. At my request, C4 and several of the Violets covered her, calming with their tones of C and gentle violet. I rode Phiz Alpha.

Make only the necessary examinations, A4 instructed, settled beside me on the Phiz. Genetic materials first. Control would begin there. His color knotted in a wavering rectangle and pulsed intense sapphire.

I deferred to his expertise, his innate scientific talents, his ability to pose theories and determine the methods of testing them then following through with the appropriate observations and conclusions. Many Aspects witnessed this sensational moment: we would gain entry to the consciousness of a life form. I had not anticipated that the others would share my curiosity but I confess to a heady exuberance that they did.

Around the room, a muted cacophony of bell tones accompanied everyone’s energy. Orange steadily quantified, calculating, recording. Red throbbed in a fervid haze, his passion palpable against the other bands. C4 Violet and her vast C family spread calm, sensing the Cetaceans’ steady movement of body functions as moments slipped by. Green flourished from place to place, a whirlwind of ideas and enthusiasm that scattered into an array of emerald and lime reflected on the table and the floor.

The Cetacean watched us with dark eyes. Her long pointed mouth slowly opened and closed, the only movement she could exert against the strong control of Violet’s calm. I gave myself entirely to the creature, lying over her to sense what she felt, to speak on her behalf. The Lab Phiz worked rapidly, standing in knots of