String Theory_ Fusion (Book 2) - Kirsten Beyer [123]
“No, I do not,” Tuvok replied.
“I watched them die, hundreds at a time. Our surgeons confirmed their deaths, and my helplessness,” Assylia choked.
“What you witnessed was the first stage of their transformation. During that time, their bodies died. But their consciousnesses, all that they are apart from their bodies, were merged with the beings that had entered them. I have heard their thoughts and their memories. In our new existence, there are no barriers between us. Once the completeness of their new existence was clear to them, they… like me… welcomed this process.
“We enter the final stage of transformation in complete willingness. It cannot be achieved otherwise. Your people exist now as pure consciousness in a form which allows them to experience the universe in ways you cannot imagine. Once they have returned home, they will never again know or fear death.
“They share only two regrets. The first is that you have suffered needlessly these fifty years. Had you not separated your mind from your body just before your body was found by the spore, you would be one with them now. They would have you know that they can feel your concern, but it, like your pain on their behalf, is unnecessary.”
Assylia listened, apparently unmoved. It was as if she could not… or would not… accept his words. “You contradict all I have been taught of life, death, and the will of the Blessed All-Knowing Light. If what you say is true, then the faith which has sustained my people for thousands of years is false,” she said haughtily.
“Your faith was imprecise. It was based on an understanding of space and time which your people have now transcended. Their belief in your Blessed All-Knowing Light has never wavered. They understand now, as I do, that his existence is as real as theirs. He is not, as you could not help but believe, a god. He is merely a more evolved state of consciousness and energy with whom they will now be able to enter into dialogue. They await his return to this city he created, and desire nothing more than to follow him home when the Time of Knowing is complete.”
Janeway followed Tuvok’s words with a mixed sense of regret and relief. She understood now that the god of the Monorhans, their Blessed All-Knowing Light, was in fact the Nacene who had tried to lead his people against the Others, and that he had been trapped in this dimension against his will, the same entity Phoebe had referred to more simply as the Light. Despite the slight panic rising within her, she also began to understand the allure of the transformation that Tuvok had described. She had often wondered at the life he and all Vulcans were resigned to live. She understood the delicate line they were forced to walk. Their experience of emotions was an overwhelming and all-consuming one. They had been able to evolve into the rich and advanced society they were only by imposing total control on those emotions. Their cult of logic had undoubtedly served them well. And she knew that despite their inability to express themselves as emotional beings, they did possess feelings, and that when they permitted themselves to feel them under strict controls, it was a satisfying experience.
But if she was hearing Tuvok correctly, the existence he was about to accept would be far superior to the constant battleground that had been, up to this point, every moment of his life. Pure logic was a state every Vulcan would aspire to but understood was impossible to attain in any practical form. Tuvok’s new existence would be, by definition, an experience of this purity, and much as she hated to admit it, she could not deny that to hold him back from this opportunity would be both selfish and cruel.