The only words he could comprehend seemed to be whispering “What time is it?” and “Does anyone here know the time?” Though conscious of, aware of, others around them, this was all that anyone could think of to say. Ehomba found it interesting that no one asked, or thought to ask, what day it was, or what month, or what year. Only, “What time?”
That, and endless self-reflective queries of “Didn’t I just get here?” This gently querulous mantra was repeated over and over, yet without any feeling of repetition or tedium. There was never any sense of more than one minute passing before the question was heard again from another source, and then another, and another. “Didn’t I just get here?” This even though an immense amount of time had obviously passed. How many millions, or billions of times the question had been ethereally posed Ehomba could not have said. It was the same for him as for everyone around him. The feeling, the certainty, that regardless of real time, no more than a minute had ever passed.
There was one other sensation. An inescapable, powerful, overriding sense of purpose to It All. What that might be, he never got a feel for. Catechist that he was, he was pleased to believe that there was a reason, a purpose behind It All, just as he was disappointed not to learn what that might be. It was frustrating, though he never felt frustrated in the familiar sense of the term.
There was no heat or cold, no feeling of weight. No pain or pleasure. Physicality without sensation. Just a sense of being—and the Purpose. No sense of a deity, either, or of anyone or anything watching or manipulating. Just souls, people, accumulating, wondering about the Purpose …