Ashlyn Chronicles 1: 2287 A.D. by Glenn van Dyke, Renee van Dyke

fugue.

***
     
     
    As the ebbing power of the fugue abated and their passions faded, so did Ashlyn’s image dissipate from beneath him. With her disappearance, he once again found himself afloat on the golden pathway. Backwards he traveled, away from the metaphysical reality until even the pathway itself disappeared.
    His return to reality was stark, brutal. He was lonely as never before. He yearned to be enfolded within her arms.
    From the moment he had awakened in the hospital, four days after his return from Denver, he had felt a growing need to be near her. For the next three days while Avenger was being readied, he had visited Ashlyn. Each time he hoped she would be awake. He had a million questions, but none of them was as important as the simple need to look into her eyes and hear her voice. Being in her presence made him feel complete.
    Once Avenger was done prepping for battle and Project Terminus checked and double-checked for readiness, he had been forced to leave.
    Now as he lay in his bed, gathering his breath, he contemplated all that had just happened. The disheveled bedding made for a convincing argument that it had been more than just a dream.
    He dared to hope that Ashlyn had awakened.

***
     
     
    To the sound of Renee’s faraway voice, Ashlyn returned to reality. Such was the depth of her longing for Steven that her heart ached for him. So powerful had been the melding of their two minds that she could still feel his lips upon hers.
    Though he was somewhere in the depths of space, her search had confirmed that he was alive. How she would get to him or when she would meet him, she did not know. For now, she was content just knowing that he was alive, and on this day, there was nothing more important to her.
    Her eyes slowly opened and she swiped the errant strands of hair from her face. “Hi there,” said Ashlyn with a soft, sexy, lingering lilt in her voice.
    Renee retrieved the sheet from the floor and draped it over Ashlyn. “Do you know what just happened to you?” Renee looked around the room at the chaotically strewn debris.
    “Not really,” Ashlyn said with an honest shrug.
    Renee studied Gena’s data on the monitor beside Ashlyn’s bed. “My god, your heart was racing at 390 beats a minute. Yet—your vitals don’t show that you were under any harmful duress at all. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Renee with sincerity and excitement as she studied the graphs. “The levels of your brain activity are unprecedented. Your theta waves were spiking at levels Gena could barely measure. Same for your adrenal glands.”
    Renee spotted an anomaly that alarmed her. “Gena, display frames 136 and 137. Decrease magnification to a 1 to 1 ratio.”
    “Frames 136 and 137 are already at a 1 to 1 ratio,” came Gena’s reply.
    “The readouts are amazing. Your pineal, hypothalamus, and pituitary glands are almost three times normal size. Not to mention, your EM field vibration levels are off the chart. So is your DMT level. In fact, everything is.”
    “In layman’s terms?” asked Ashlyn.
    “I think—you had an out-of-body experience. I have read a number of case studies about people who claim to have had them, traveling to distant places and other time periods. They say that by channeling the mind, they could create something akin to an inter-dimensional portal, but there has never been any hard, scientific evidence to support it. Not evidence like this anyway.”
    “Do you think that’s what happened to me?” asked Ashlyn.
    “Probably. These numbers are incredible! It’s just that yours was so interactive, so physical. It was like seeing two converged realities. Ashlyn, if I can be so candid, it appeared that you were with someone in the O.B.E? They were twisting you into a pretzel,” said Renee with a small, embarrassed laugh. “Do you know who it was?”
    Ashlyn blushed.
    “And I’m also curious about why it all started when you said aloud the name of the three stars in