JAS WASN’T SURE IF her eyes were closed or open, but she could feel as much as see an infinite expanse surrounding her. She was floating in infinity, and she was part of it, endless and unconfined. Whirls of colors she did and didn’t recognize spun around her, though she was also a part of them. She was empty and she was whole; she was split into a billion pieces and she was complete. All her desires and needs, worries and fears, were gone. Existence was all and it was perfect. She was perfect and free.
She floated forever, but at the very edge of her mind something nibbled. Like a grain of dust in her eye, a tiny piece of gravel in her shoe, an invisible scrap of food stuck between her teeth. It was the sense of a task incomplete. Something she had to do or see, or someone she’d left beh
