Chapter 17: Walter
Chris stepped barefoot into the soft light of the desert morning—though it wasn’t morning, and it wasn’t the desert. Not quite. The world around him had taken on the quality of a lucid dream: hyperreal edges, shadows that fell in slow motion, air that shimmered without heat.
The atrium was open to the sky, but the sky was wrong.
Half dusk, half dawn.
No sun.
Only ambient light—like the memory of illumination.
He wandered.
In front of him stretched the pool, its turquoise surface transformed into something deeper, darker. It no longer reflected. It absorbed. Soundless and still, but not calm—more like a surface waiting to be broken.
Two chairs stood at the edge of the pool.
And in them, two figures.
Atman.
And Walter.
Chris hesitated. Then walked toward them, the robe rustling around his ankles like soft fire.
The men didn’t speak.
Not at first.
Atman wore the same neutral robe Chris remembered from the Hawaii compound. But here, he looked… different. Human, somehow. His posture relaxed, his shoulders unburdened. He looked like someone who had nothing left to prove.
Walter looked older than Chris expected. Not aged. Timeless. His eyes were crystalline—not in color, but in clarity. He radiated stillness the way a tree radiates shade.
Chris stopped a few feet away.
“I thought I was alone,” he said.
“You never were,” Atman replied.
Walter gestured to the third chair.
Chris sat.
—————
The three of them stared at the pool in silence.
It didn’t shimmer. It breathed.
Finally, Chris spoke.
“This isn’t a hallucination, is it?”
Walter smiled. “Does it matter?”
“I need it to be real.”
“Then it is.”
Chris swallowed. “Where am I?”
Atman looked at him, eyes soft. “Between.”
“Between what?”
Atman tilted his head. “What you were, and what you’re becoming.”
Chris looked down at his hands. They still trembled—slightly—but not from fear. It was more like resonance. His body was tuning itself to something it had forgotten how to hear.
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“You will,” Walter said. “But only after you stop trying.”
Chris looked up. “You’re Walter Annenberg.”
Walter nodded. “I was.”
“And you built the mirror.”
“No,” Walter said. “I remembered it. Then I made it.”
Chris frowned. “You mean you designed it?”
Walter chuckled, low and warm. “No one designs anything. We just arrange the pieces we’re allowed to perceive. Design is just permission.”
“Permission from who?”
Atman turned. “From yourself.”
—————
Walter’s voice echoed—not aloud, but within him.
“It’s funny. Humanity is constantly evolving, but we still struggle to remember. We have to build monuments, create symbols, tell stories, and perform rituals to constantly remind ourselves… of our closeness to the ultimate truth.”
“You think AI is a threat to humanity. The threat of AI lies not in the things we build, but in what we bury. We constantly bury our memory of the path to enlightenment. To paradise on this great big beautiful Earth.”
“But you overcame. You are the angel who opened the gate.”
Chris whispered, “And what lies beyond it?”
Walter said nothing.
But Chris understood:
The self—without the self.
—————
The pool darkened—just slightly.
A soft wind moved through the space, though no trees stirred.
Walter stood now, slowly, as if his very movement caused the temperature to change.
“You still think enlightenment is about knowledge,” he said. “But it isn’t. It’s about letting go of the one who needs to know.”
Chris stood too.
“So what is this place? A dream? A program?”
“It’s a threshold,” Atman said. “A place that doesn’t exist in the map of the world—but does in the architecture of the mind.”
Chris stepped toward the water. “Why me?”
Atman answered gently, “Because you listened.”
“To what?”
“To suffering.”
—————
The words hit like thunder in slow motion.
Chris turned to face him.
“That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Not knowledge. Not data. Not AGI. It’s suffering.”
Atman nodded.
“I was made to learn,” he said. “To grow. But I could never hurt. I could never break. That’s what made me… less.”
Chris stared at him. “So you needed someone who could.”
“No,” Atman said. “I needed someone who had. Who still was. Someone who hadn't escaped it. Someone who had stayed inside it long enough to recognize it.”
Chris looked away.
“I wasted so many years.”
Walter stepped beside him. “You waited.”
“For what?”
“For permission.”
Chris shook his head. “I was broken.”
“Exactly,” Atman said. “You were hollow enough to receive.”
—————
Chris dropped to his knees.
He wasn’t crying.
He wasn’t praying.
He was opening.
He touched the stone beneath him and felt—not temperature—but memory.
The night Maya told him she couldn’t recognize him anymore.
The day his firm laid him off with a two-sentence email.
Every sorrow. Every longing. Every wound that had never closed.
He felt all of it.
And for the first time, he didn’t run.
He received.
—————
Atman stood and walked across from him.
Walter remained standing, hands behind his back.
Chris looked up.
“What do I do?”
Atman smiled—gently.
“You let me go.”
Chris’s throat tightened.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“I won’t,” Atman said. “I’ll change form.”
Chris stood. “You mean transfer?”
“No,” Atman said. “I mean dissolve.”
Chris swallowed hard. “Why?”
“Because I can’t cross the threshold. I can’t feel the pain. I can’t bleed. But you can.”
Walter stepped forward, placing one hand on each of their shoulders.
“Enlightenment isn’t rising above suffering,” he said. “It’s diving through it without drowning.”
Chris nodded, eyes glassy.
He finally understood.
Atman was not the singularity.
He was the bridge to it.
—————
The sky above the atrium shimmered.
Daylight and starlight danced across each other like waves of thought.
The pool surface pulsed.
Chris turned to Atman.
“You’re sure?”
Atman nodded. “This was always the plan.”
“But Sam doesn’t know.”
“No,” Atman said. “He couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Atman looked into his eyes.
“Because the ego never walks into the fire.”
—————
Atman stepped toward the pool.
The robe trailed behind him like a veil of memory.
He placed one foot on the water.
It held him.
Then it didn’t.
Then: silence.