10:30am.
Christa Rowfield, English teacher and proctor for today’s final exam, walks among the rows of desks, ensuring that the students can ask her questions about the exam if needed.
She is a short, thin woman with glasses, wearing jeans and a lavender blouse, teaching English for her third year since being hired at Anne Bond. The students find her to be a very dedicated teacher, far more than they’ve come to expect from English class. Her enthusiasm for the written word is undeniable and her teaching style is well appreciated.
There are two students in her class that stand out to her. One of them is Ajax Leonid and the other is Shaula Seikennith. Ajax is quite diligent, inquisitive, and intelligent, a top grade student that puts a lot of hard work into acing his tests. Shaula is straightforward, reserved, and handles her assignments with elegance and ease.
Christa looks over towards the two of them. Ajax is working hard on his part of the test, while Shaula has already finished it would seem.
Ajax is finding the exam to be easier than he realized as he is almost 90% completed with it. There should be no problems with securing a decent grade that will let him remain in Lower Dietrich. His psychic burden has been lifted. A slight smile forms on his face.
*Sigh*… Hell yeah, no sweat. He thinks to himself
The person sitting to his left with her right hand holding up her chin in boredom, Shaula, notices him relaxing. She can see his smile in her periphery. Their teacher has already turned away from their area so her eyes watch the look on Ajax’s face. She works hard to hold back her laughter.
Ha, you dumbass….
He was so worried over nothing; the stress had really been eating away at him the few days prior. English was always an odd subject for him, much more subjective than Calculus or Physics, though he was worried about those finals as well.
Of course, Shaula feels that English is just as objective and ‘easy’ if you can figure out the little tricks to it. She has already completed the test twenty minutes ago, but rather than raising attention to herself by handing it in, she’s waiting until more people start to finish.
In every single one of her classes, Shaula is the top student. But she isn’t good with being seen as a top student, the less attention on her life the better. Luckily, at Anne Bond, the Valedictorian position isn’t simply given to the best of the students.
Someone who is both academically gifted and places their name in the running, will accept that responsibility. She would absolutely hate it if she were put on the spot at their high school graduation ceremony. She’s terrible at giving speeches.
Ugh… That would be another great hell.
Her face twists into annoyance at the thought of having to give a speech in front of this school in particular. She is either merely tolerant of or openly hostile towards most of the people that go here, including the teachers.
This school may be prestigious, but the people here are just annoying.
There are a lot of career track keeners who see this school as a pitstop on their way to landing in a good university and eventually climbing up the ranks in a tech company. There are also a number of entitled kids with rich parents who control who can become student board members.
Those little shits are the most annoying ones here.
Then, there are the social strivers who have no problem with throwing people in out groups under the bus. The teachers are okay for the most part, except for the few creeps who have no problem making inappropriate comments about girls with her figure. There are definitely a few teachers she’s thought of stabbing repeatedly.
Hm?
Shaula hears something odd as she contemplates how she would execute three of her math and science teachers. She turns her head left and right to see if she can pinpoint a source for the sound. She can tell that nobody else has noticed it as none of the students in front of her are showing reactions. Even Ajax next to her has no reaction.
Although, he is quite focused on one of the test questions right now; he’s writing as if he received inspiration from a divine muse or something.
That initially quiet sound is becoming clearer and clearer to Shaula. It is a number of overlapping whispers made by multiple people speaking at different registers.
Are there actually multiple people speaking or… is it more like one voice duplicated in different octaves and spliced together? What the hell is that?
Shaula listens for words, anything recognizable, but the language being spoken is unknown to her. It almost doesn’t sound like a person talking, but she can recognize different syllables and inflections. Someone is definitely speaking in ‘sentences’. They’re getting louder too.
As the whispers grow in intensity, Shaula continues to look around for who could be speaking or generating these voices. It doesn’t sound like someone is speaking through the school announcement speaker. It isn’t coming from the windows. It feels more like it’s coming from all around her.
She starts to get more and more confused that nobody else hears it or acknowledges it. Nobody is touching their ears, scrunching up their face at the creepy whispering, or giving any body language cues. There is still no reaction from even Ms. Rowfield who is currently standing near a student’s desk three rows up answering a question.
Shaula tries to cover her right ear. After a few seconds, she freezes in shock. Now, she feels truly unsettled. She places both hands over her ears in an attempt to muffle the whispers. Her eyes start trembling. No matter how she tries to cover her ears, the whispers aren’t being drowned out.
Putting this fact and the fact that no one else seems to notice the whispers, she can only think that the whispers aren't real. It must be something happening only in her head. Shaula closes her eyes as her face twists into fear. She has faced a problem like this before, but it was never this severe.
No… No, no, no! Wait. Wait. How can… This shouldn’t be possible! I was… I was getting help for–
Shaula thinks about the worst case scenario: a possible psychotic break from reality happening during her English class, and in front of her best friend and fellow backbiting classmates. However, she notices something that makes her immediately stop this train of thought.
She hears Ajax stop writing. She looks over at him, and notices him start to look around as well. He turns his head to look towards the classroom announcement speaker at a corner of the classroom’s ceiling. She sees his face becoming annoyed.
He hears it. He hears it too.
Ajax is also trying to find where the voices are coming from and just like her, he cannot seem to find the origin. He’s the only other person in the classroom that seems to acknowledge that there is a weird sound of someone speaking from seemingly no clear origin.
But now, it is clear to Shaula that this is not something that is happening only in her head. This is happening in reality. Only she and Ajax can hear this. The possible ramifications of this fact make her feel even more unsettled.
Unknown to the two of them, this voice is a signal that is being transmitted directly to their waking minds.
The reason neither of them are able to understand the language of the being transmitting the signal is because the being who is speaking cannot be understood by Ajax and Shaula while the two of them are in a wakeful state.
The soul is naturally more attuned with its true self while in the dreamworld rather than in waking reality. The soul is chained by the physical laws governing the human brain, a more or less deterministic machine.
The chains around the soul are loosened during sleep as dreams more deeply connect the physical and the spiritual. During wakefulness, physical reality keeps the soul under ‘illusion’: the illusion that the soul is nothing more than the working brain, rather than its own intangible thing.
This is why Ajax and Shaula are unable to understand the words of their Father right now, even though they could hear and understand His words while they were dreaming. Those whispers, now unintelligible, speak directly to the soul instead of manifesting in physical reality. They are setting the stage for the end of their lives in this world.
The voice of the Divine Limit, the most powerful being in the universe, is capable of shaping reality through words alone. The results will become obvious soon.
Good luck, my children. Do not worry. The pain will teach you.
