by Keith Watkins
Douglas Sheppard draws a warm bath.
He pours the black bath salts into the fount of water. Effervescent black foam bubbles, whirls of midnight ink swirls through the currents.
A caul is laid onto the surface of the warm bath.
The black gauze wicks the viscous inky water; the fabric becomes a matte black bandage draped across a pool of obsidian blood.
Doug peels the mouth of the caul back, a paper thin amphibian sleeping bag opens its maw, and the water diffuses through the gauzy material. The bottom of the caul’s mouth drops to the bottom, and the top is pinched and raised by Douglas’ hand.
Sheppard slips into the caul, submerges himself in the bath and closes the maw. The caul seals its lips and clings to Sheppard’s skin,
Douglas Sheppard sinks to the bottom of his bear claw tub. The caul tightens around him.
When the urge, the instinct, the thirst for the next breath breaks open Doug’s mouth, his chest betrays him, and opens up to pull the water into his lungs.
Douglas chokes on nothing.
He tries to sit up.
Douglas struggles, the caul constricts around his skin, pulls his limbs tighter and tighter to his body.
The water sloshes over him.
The next spasm of retches yields futile attempts to fill his lungs with anything, something. His lungs find nothing.
The fluid will not yield. Not a drop of liquid. Not a single gulp of air.
The black briny fluid strains against the filmy cloth to fills his lungs. He struggles, the caul tightens about him. The caul constricts around him.
Douglas sinks, to the bottom of the bathtub. He recedes into the warm darkness. Douglas sinks further than just the bottom of the tub.
The ache of his oxygen starved muscles is a distant memory. The starburst and bright spots of hallucinations being choked out of him begin to become incoherent cries in the twilight of forgetfulness.
The darkness of the shadow bath creeps to completeness.
Douglas Sheppard resigns, and slips into unconsciousness.
Completely still, the slack body floats, slipping upward to the surface of the viscous fluid.
His tightly wrapped face breaks the oily surface, bobs for a moment.
A jolt surges through his body in spasms.
After a moment, the body is still again.
Douglas Sheppard body quakes in spasms, again and again, with every electric shock.
Sheppard seems to be retching, nothing comes out.
He coughs, violently, at first.
The coughing fits subside. Slow, deliberate breath takes the place of the staccato of desperation.
From behind the tightly wrapped shroud, binding his face, binding his body, the curve of a smile etches the pure black statue of a human face, cloaked in the darkest of shadows.
Doug’s face is a black mass of seemingly solid shadow, floating in an inkwell. He draws a slow and steady breath thorough the hint of a smile on his obfuscated face.
The matte black cocoon keeps the body insulated, thermally, and allows Sheppard to breath. The Umbra solution and the caul will not allow the liquid to enter his lungs.
Rapid eye movement can be seen, barely, A whisper of movement just above the surface of the inky bath.
Douglas Sheppard floats like a log in a placid pool of ink.
He floats for several hours, in a placid black pool, a buoyant obsidian statue.
After the third hour or so, Douglas groans. He pulls a hand free up against his side.
The hand slithers between the tight caul and his bare skin, up to the top of his head. He pulls the caul from his face, opening up the amphibian sleeping bag.
He is weeping, as he pulls the fabric from his skin.
He peels the wet cloth from his body. He grimaces like a man shedding a layer of paper-thin cut skin from his body.
He sobs and laughs shivers and trembles, as the lukewarm water drains away. The caul has gone limp, and lets every droplet escape its lattice.
Douglas Sheppard research is extensive. His study held books on Foucault, Camus, Kinsey, T. W. Alle, Dawkins, and Dyson.
Douglas relaxes his focus on the bookshelf. His attention begins to pinpoint the voice of the man interviewing him.
“Some call you a psychic vampire, others a charlatan. Others praise your work, playing the video games you design all hours of the day and night. You’re a self-proclaimed transhuman, neuropsychiatrist, a wicked video game designer, and virtual realtor. I know you don’t like interviews, so I’ll ask you some far out questions, and let our audience draw their own conclusions, cool?”
“Cool,” Douglas Sheppard replies.
“But, I won’t answer your questions, here. Instead, I will lay the VR mask upon you. I have created a tour, of my typical day at work, and it is ready for you to experience, in virtual reality.”
The journalist isn’t sure if he accepts, as the mask is withdrawn from Sheppard’s satchel. Sheppard approaches, the journalist finds his hands rising in apprehension, remembers his curiosity, and withdraws his wordless complaints.
The mask feels cool and heavy, a thick clinging fabric that envelopes his face. The mask quickens and seems to seep into the journalists ears, nose, collapses on his still open eyes.
A gasp, and the journalist is gone form this world, and into the next.
From behind the shadows, Douglas Sheppard watches as the journalist forms his article, via the virtual notebook the holds in his virtual hands, in the virtual reality psychoscape, made for his exploring. The journalist cannot see Sheppard, Sheppard isn’t plugged in.
“Douglas Sheppard is a statuesque man, stony faced. He has a no bullshit face that occasionally breaks into an icy, milky, no-shit smile. Long chestnut dreadlocks cascade down his spine, his skin is tamarind. His almond eyes, set into a deep furrowing brow, are completely pitch-black, from one corner to the other,” The journalist scribbled words crystal clear, as if spoken directly to Sheppard, in this place, even before the journalist wills his virtual fingers to move. In the real world, Sheppard will email what he has written back to the journalist.
“The first shadow we know played upon the inner walls of the womb. Through the dimly illuminated walls of our mothers stretched belly, and our newly formed eyelids, within the time and space of our development, the impressions of shadows are drawn through developing flesh, down into the fresh tunnel of perception, through which our consciousness emerges,” Douglas enjoys narrating the scene that envelops the journalist.
The light of the womb room the journalist is enveloped in recedes to a pinprick. The pain of being pierced feels real, and the journalist almost drops his notebook, until he realizes the point of pain is the only light he can see by, in an ocean of endless darkness.
“Light is a diamond in darkness, searching without knowing. The hard reality of beauty and its value pierces into perception. The shadow is a place where light meets matter and resolves color, tone, and texture,” A new world takes shape, and the journalist point of discomfort recedes.
“Shade gives a glimpse of reason to form.” Sheppard continues.
“The mask I have placed upon you takes the measurement of a broad spectrum of biometric activity. The MESH, or Modular Embedding Simulation Helix algorithm, catalyzes a psychoscape. The MESH is a bridge created by the measurements. The data is reverse engineered and rendered into a virtual reality simulation of subjective experiences translated into a collection of virtual experiences,”
“I collect shades of human experience, in the crepuscular phases of consciousness; near death, and upon death, the state of death, even during a birth, and other points of experiences that lay just beyond the familiar moments of one’s life. These all formed the data lattice known as the Umbra.”
Douglas pauses. “This is the place I have brought you to, it is born of living volunteers, and deceased organ donors that were terminal, and decided to contribute their final moments to this place,”
The journalist awe was apparent. Despite his gothic makeup and outfit, finding himself in a world made of dead minds is a bit much for even the most morbid to fathom.
“Other states of consciousness were extruded as well. Deviant static states, derivations of the median of human experiences,” Douglas indirectly guides the skittish journalist through more lively hospital wards, of various locations, passing into seamless scenes from one hospital to the next, through slightly crooked halls that don’t quite line up.
Sheppard continues, without missing a beat. The journalist enters a series of classrooms.
“Various states of disability, various types of levels of intelligences, developmental disabilities and a variety of physical, emotional, psychological, social handicaps all have been a part of the study group, with the proper consent, of course,”
The journalist watches as the mask had been laid upon the faces of a blind girl, a deaf man, a sociopathic prisoner, and several schizophrenic men and women. He recognizes iconic members of the intellectual elite. The journalist notes that some of the study group seems relatively normal, except that they seem to have much, materialistically, in this world. Some members of the study group were dying from not having enough, to even sustain themselves.
“The poor that participated, I financially liberated,” Sheppard whispered, as the journalist experienced the recorded image of him, removing a mask from an orphaned brown skinned boy.
“With great care, Douglas Sheppard caught and wrought out these experiences, these extreme moments of human life, as he could acquire them, in the daily activities in human civilization. He needed not to cause tragedy or extreme circumstance. The tragic events were ubiquitous; he merely looked for the opportunity and acquired the consent of a volunteer, or acquired the means to study. Sheppard treats the members of the living group, to the best of his ability and means,” the journalist penned.
“He approaches these people, and upon their heads, laid the mask upon them with the greatest of care, and compassion. Compassion for the individual and complete reverence for the moments of experience, itself,” the journalist, it seems, has been moved.
Perhaps, it is seeing the fleeting moment between life and death. Perhaps it’s a shared portion of the thirst to make sense of it all.
“The sampling mask is more of a helmet, and series of sensory pads, then just fabric,” the journalist notes.
“The biometric data taken ranges from blood sample feeds from veins and arteries leading to and from the brain, through probes set into the volunteers’ neck. In the blood, the half-life of neurotransmitters are titrated and measured.”
“Electromagnetic brainwaves and CAT scans, along with a detailed infrared cranial scans are performed.”
“The data is fed into a predictive algorithm. Data is used to carve from the standard median of medical metadata deviations. A shadow of the experience is then calculated and reinterpreted,” Sheppard answers the unasked questions, from behind the veil of being a preprogrammed response, from the comfort of a darkness just beyond the journalist perception.
“When the acquired psych-shadow is layered over a live feed, there are points of experience that align and points that deviate. This topography create an entirely new, dynamic, a sympathetic pattern, in which real-time variations are provided by the experience of the live participant and the Umbra,”
VR game designer, neurologist and transhuman Douglas Sheppard felt the interview went as well as it could have.
Douglas Sheppard sits at his desk, in a bathrobe, in his plush prewar brownstone.
A collection of statues, mostly from Africa, some from other continents and islands, adorn the place he calls home and his workspace.
There is a statue in every corner, along the wall, and placed in the center of thick ornate rugs laid in every room.
In the living room, the den, the library, his office and bedroom; there is at least one centerpiece rug, of intricate geometry, and an anchoring statue, in the center of it.
Doug pads down the hall to the stairwell. He places his hand on the banister, feels the cold polished mahogany under the palm of his hand.
The shadows cast by the statues breathe through the flickering of candlelight set into motion by a cool breeze.
The breeze moves the shadows of tons of marble, wood, glass, and metal that anchor and punctuate the decor of his brownstone; a fusion of modern, ancient, mystical, shady, serpentine, labyrinthine style.
Douglas moseys through his dimly lit den, enters his kitchen and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. He turns on his heels and returns to the stairs.
He opens the basement stairwell door, and descends into the creaky and shadowy musk below.
The basement contains the superfluous statues of his collection, stacked up against the walls and shelves.
Not since Dr. Kevorkian has there been a more controversial public relations issue in the medical community. The use of medical records, the manipulation of those deemed invalid, and to intrude upon the last moments of those passing from this world, into whatever passes for the next, just to capture data.
Douglas Sheppard feels the data is critical; vital, not vile.
All of the data from human experience acquired, is in the name of the exploration and understanding of the basic elements of human nature; to discover the natural laws of consciousness.
The dying organ donors that sign up are preemptively proposed, and afterward, the harvesting of organs is near complete.
The living study group volunteers are given points of interest in their own continued treatment, and some show improvements in the quality of their life, if not their condition.
The participants in the study receive a grant that covers medical bills, life insurance, and other costs of care. Sheppard is well funded, so he is able to acquire volunteers, despite the controversy and the intrusive nature of the study.
The issue isn’t just the intrusion into the confidential information, the intrusion into the intimate moment of individuals’ deathbed, and vulnerable lives of the disabled.
It was what was inferred, if not eluded to, a promise of a type of afterlife.
Sheppard tries not to explicitly make that promise.
But, the implied conclusion of passing a continuous experience from a dying body, into a real-time, continuous, VR platform does seem to promise just that.
Well, it does help with funding, so Sheppard doesn’t discourage it.
He himself is hesitant to even venture much further than a few steps beyond the thought of an afterlife, one life after an other.
A few steps, tread carefully.
The only reason why he hesitates to venture a few steps beyond the thought of an afterlife is because each night he takes steps to travels beyond his own life.
The mask captures the experience of the volunteers, be they terminally ill, or unpardoned death row inmates. The mask takes in the experience of those that pass under careful watch and care. The mask observes the minds of the invalid, the deranged. Afterwards he makes every effort to see them through to recovery, if possible, if not, some new understanding of their conditions.
The neurological activity; from neurotransmitters to biometrics, are given context in rendered metadata. A type of continued experience is then given. The results are not that in which one may be ready to accept, none the less, believe; although, some gamers practically live in this place.
It is from the fabric of these shadows of living consciousness that the VR “afterlife” known as the Umbra, has been built.
Sheppard’s critics cast him a pseudo psychopomp, or a real pompous psycho, alternately.
In his activities, he takes the quandaries of oblivion, as well as the imperfect information of being truly unknown, and he builds this realm, soul by soul.
These uncomfortable and seldom considered states of being are a type of foundation for an alternative realm.
In the beginning, it was a bit of a house of horror.
It seemed to be an eternal stretch of horrifics, until more was learned about the natural laws governing subconscious and unconscious psychology, and the inner mechanics that bend the rules, themselves.
“The secrets of true mental health and traumatic recovery are the skeleton keys to heaven’s gate,” the journalist later wrote, after exploring the hidden beauties of his own mind, that Sheppard redressed as the journalist mind wandered.
The Umbra is a place sewn of the deceased minds he harvested, with threads of unusual points of views. The topography is how these minds are similar and different; the places they overlap in similarity or diverge in difference create a type of living topology; forming a virtual climate and geology. The differential in iconography and archetypes make both territory and map.
Where these mental shadows conflict or are sympathetic to each other, fieldable points are created, representing the harmony or discord of events experienced.
When a resolution or harmony is created, wondrous places are possible. Where there is discord, well…
He’s working on it.
The developments he has made are great.
And he had much help. Not to mention the typical or occasional atypical government funding. The video game industry has given financial support, as well.
As a scientist and doctor he ministers to the dying, and harvests their final data set.
For exploration and data processing, Sheppard utilizes the psychonauts that call themselves “gamers”. The gamers affectionately call him a virtual realtor.
He is a Virtual Reality game designer, part times, but in all actuality, this is just the other half of a double shift he pulls, daily, in his own work.
The realms in which the gamers play are the frontier of actual psychic conflict and resolution, in the collected psychoscape.
Their recreational activities sharpen the image of the Umbra. The gamers play in a growing shadow of human consciousness, cast by the dying light of his terminal organ donor volunteers, in a spectrum of colors, placed on a palette by the unusual circumstance of the living study group, set upon the MESH woven from metadata, by an algorithm.
The gamers experience this VR place as a challenge or a puzzle; learn skills and tactics to be mastered. All reinterpreted as formula and axioms in psychonautic exploration.
Douglas Sheppard’s own transhuman augmentations are what serve as a gateway between these worlds.
He is augmented in both the real world, and in the “other world”. In this world, he cannot see. He is blind. His augments allow him to see the Umbra, while unplugged and in a meditative state. He walks through the world, guided by a collection of memories he gathers. In the Umbra, he can peer into the real world, through the fresh memories of the gamers, the volunteers, the study group, and any who pass through the Umbra.
The steps he takes beyond life, each night is a ritual he carefully performs. To disassociate from reality, there are several paths.
A psychotic break, sensory deprivation, sleep, and the act of dying are all paths.
He must pass through all of these gates, each night and tend to those that to pass to and from the Umbra; conveniently, via the VR technology he has developed. Every night, he mends his mind, recollects his senses, wakes, and revives himself as he passes on either side of the gates of Umbra.
He has formed himself, his own life experience, as the shadow of a proverbial virtual Atlas.
A woman once wrote a book about an alternate interpretation of the myth of Atlas; her work was an unbalanced allegory.
At best, it attempts to use the myth of Atlas, as it relates to a socioeconomic exchange, which has been proven faulty. She also wrote a book about ethics. It is from a single axiom in that book of ethics, that he was able to quantify relatively coherent values that each mind could correlate.
As the shadow of the pillar of Umbra, he gives detail to this symbol. Via the actualization of his value of self, through the path of his relationship to his selfhood, and for a moment, of his life; he shares a new experience, in another world.
Each night, as Umbra’s designer, he draws the caul back, dawns a mask of shade, and slips into Umbra. He draws a bath, laced with Morpheumica, allows the baths inky solution to dissolve his senses, and allows the liquid to choke the life from him, in steps.
The bath serves as a conduit between his lives, his worlds, and the journey between; a cocoon of the metamorphosis of being.
Every night he loses himself in between each choking gasp, in between the dulling pulse beat, and relinquishes his life to the feedback loop. He watches his life go down a drain into the heart of a realm of shadows, gives everything he is in the cold madness, as he is funneled into Umbra, becoming less his self and more Umbra itself. Umbra takes everything from him, and gives an eternal moment of being.
Umbra and Sheppard share one life, one mystery of existence, and one plane of sentient space time. The creator and creation are one.
The caul of Umbra is a biofeedback interface and psychoactive conduit. The mask of shade takes the measurements of his mind, as it recedes into darkness. The electrodes and the life support systems woven into its fibers jolt him back alive, revive him and sustain his body, while in torpor.
But, when he is reborn, he reawakens on the other side of reality.
From his rebirthed existence, he must travel from the core of himself, and the central core of the VR plane, back again to reality and his real self. Once again, to gain passage, he must relinquish himself, allowing the experience to be fed again into Umbra. As it consumes him, Umbra disgorges his mind back into his body.
His body once again is brought into a nonliving state, to be resuscitated again, but this time on the real side of experience.
During the day, in his subconscious and id, the experiences of the games exist in his mind. In the quiet moments of his day, he can sense the gamers, the moments before they plug in, sense the gamers talking to NPC’s and each other, sense them playing, in the back of his mind.
During the night, in his nonliving and undead dreams, Umbra serves as a central coherent point in which he may resolve the coming and going of gamers.
He also reinterprets other journeys, as research data, to be harvested. He chooses to use the data to heal the very psychological fabric he is attempting he weave, form and tailor into a habitable universe.
Each night, he descends from his home, into his basement laboratory.
Into the warm bath, he sinks from the sensory deprivation, lack of oxygen, the loss of consciousness, and the moment of ceased biological activity.
He actualizes, a few steps beyond his own life, and re-actualizes a few steps beyond his death, twice a night.
Within the journey, through the algorithm, he becomes the cross road of an equation, a cross-section server, a virtual reality equator.
In this place, he has found these first steps beyond his own life into something…
..other…
If not this realm, what will be his afterlife?
He pauses for a moment, before letting go, before leading himself through darkness.
Perhaps…
If only someone would be there, to be his shepherd.
Pages lying open 