I had the pieces of this short story in my poetry journal today I'd like to share it with you as a single chapter from a possibly larger version.
The Bridge of Aszis
How very sad, I used to think, that
a mind can live its whole life locked inside a skull.
On Earth, that thought came to me in
crowded trains, in noisy cafeterias, in classrooms where people’s
eyes were dull from too many facts and not enough wonder. I would
look at all those faces and feel it — the sense that we were all
carrying entire galaxies of thought and feeling, and most of it would
never be known.
Many mysteries does our mind hide.
There is so much to learn.
When I was ten, the headaches
started — bright white bursts behind my eyes whenever someone
nearby felt something intense. I could tell when my teacher was about
to snap at the class, when the stranger across the bus aisle was
quietly grieving, when my mother was worrying about money and trying
not to show it. I didn’t hear their thoughts, not exactly. I felt
their weight.
By twelve, I could push back. If
someone’s anger boiled too loud in a room, I could nudge it down
without knowing how. Calm the edges. Blur the sharpness. It scared
me.
My parents did what scared parents
do: they got me tested.
The tests came back with quiet
urgency and a stack of documents stamped with the emblem of a world I
had only heard in rumours: Aszis.
By eighteen, the choice was made. My
headaches were worse. My accidental nudges stronger. Earth’s
crowded, hurting mind pressed against mine like static.
So on a grey morning that smelled
like wet concrete, I stood in a small park with my parents and tried
not to cry.
The transport point shimmered
between the bare trees, a circle of air that looked like heat over
asphalt even though the ground was cold.
“You don’t have to go,” my
father said, his hands jammed in his coat pockets as if he could hold
the moment there by sheer will.
We all knew better. People like me
either learned control or they burned out. My mother’s eyes were
red from a week of not sleeping.
She stepped closer, took my hands,
and for the first time in my life she pushed gently at my mind, the
way you might tap on a window.
Can you hear me?
I blinked.
Yes.
She gave me a sad little smile.
Go. Learn. Bring something back to
heal us.
Aloud, she said, “Don’t let them
make you forget where you came from.”
“I won’t,” I said.
The gate brightened. I stepped into
the light.
Transition wasn’t like walking
anywhere. It felt more like falling inward.
One heartbeat I was in the wounded
park; the next I was surrounded by violet.
The Zim grass stretched in all
directions, waves of purple under a soft breeze. Above the field, the
sky was gold near the horizon, blue overhead. No smog. The air
carried the smells of soil and something sweet, like distant fruit.
Towering burgandies rose overhead,
massive living structures with maroon leaves filtering warm light.
Students glided along paths, some
walking, some drifting slightly above the ground through mind-power.
A presence brushed my awareness —
warm, gentle.
Welcome, a voice said inside my
head.
A tall figure approached. “I am
Teral. Instructor at the University of the Mind.”
They guided me to the University
woven into the Burgandies themselves — hollows, terraces, chambers
grown rather than built.
Our first lesson took place in a
circular root chamber. Teral stood in the centre.
“Before you learn to shape the
world,” they said, “you must learn to shape your own mind.”
We received translucent
thought-stones. “Lift it a hand’s breadth,” Teral said.
Simple.
Mine shot upward like a launched
spark. A ripple of force burst from me and disrupted half the class.
Flush-faced, I whispered, “I’m
sorry.”
“Power is common,” Teral said
gently. “Understanding is rare.”
I slept deeply that night — until
the visions started.
Earth and Aszis overlapping. Light
threads connecting worlds. Two possibilities merging, separating. And
always, at the centre, a single bright point.
Me.
During meditation, the vision
solidified. A voice said:
You are the bridge. Not between
places. Between ways of being.
I didn’t understand — until the
message from Earth arrived.
Representative Lian appeared on a
holo-disc. “Our world is failing. We ask for your help.”
The Aszis Council feared giving
power to a wounded world. Lian feared losing billions of lives.
Two truths.
Both real.
I stepped forward.
“Let me try something,” I said.
With consent, I linked Lian’s
emotions — her fear, duty, hope — to the Council’s awareness.
And I linked the Council’s calm harmony back to her.
No force. No intrusion. Just
feeling.
Silence followed, deep and shifting.
Lian whispered, “I didn’t know
how much we hurt.”
“And we did not know how much you
love what remains,” a councillor said.
So a plan formed: not factories of
mental power, but a small school. A beginning grounded in empathy,
not ability. Slow. Careful. Real.
And one day, when my training is
complete, I will return to Earth — not with blueprints, but with
ways of seeing.
I’ll tell them what Aszis taught
me: that there’s a whole other world inside our minds. And the
wonders come not from what we build, but what we understand.
