A New Beginning: Transcendence

By Johanna Kristin Ellerup

An unusual look at life, life after death, and reincarnation as told by a murder victim's spirit as it seeks to answer the ageless question - Why are we here?
Within the soul of Transcendence is the premise that no matter how bad life gets, no matter how many mistakes one makes, there is always a chance to transcend.
A pharmacist is murdered for investigating an international cartel and descends into a parallel, quantum universe where she believes her goal is to reunite her orphaned pets with a uniquely gifted, older woman. What follows is the intermingling of the lives of otherwise unrelated people, leading to the healing of old wounds and hatreds, strength in the face of overwhelming hardship and lasting friendships.
When the old woman suddenly dies, the pharmacist is forced into the old woman's body and is faced with having to continue a life that is not her own while struggling to understand the mystical forces at play in the universe.
Transcendence is an inspirational look into the transformative ability of acceptance and unconditional love enjoyed by readers both young and old. Its characters, aside from the dogs, have not been assigned names so that you, the reader, enjoy the immersive experience of using your imagination and personal experience to do so freely and unhindered. Each character has been intentionally designed, with very few limitations, to foster that imagination to its utmost extent.

REVIEWS:
Kirkus Review - "the tale’s dialogue, which, despite grappling with metaphysical ideas, is natural and affable... The interpersonal relationships and friendships this mysticism or extrasensory perception facilitates are warm and welcoming."

D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
Transcendence is set in a fictional American town, blends occult drama with a psychological thriller piece, and adds a touch of murder mystery via an unexpected protagonist: the murder victim's spirit, which faces a question of purpose in its reincarnated life.
The fact that the pharmacist has been murdered in the process of investigating an international drug ring is only the beginning of a complex tale. Themes move through her revision of her goals in the afterlife, her venture into the lives of unrelated people (think Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, but with more of a philosophical hand), and her growing realizations about unconditional love and its purpose in the world.
This lends Transcendence a much more ethereal and spiritual tone than other stories of reincarnation. What do dogs and business interests have to do with this bigger picture? Johanna Kristin Ellerup weaves a tale that incorporates many unusual facets throughout. Readers should cultivate flexibility as they pursue a mercurial story that delves into these different lives and realizations. Any such effort will be well rewarded with a story that is poignant, revealing, and filled with evocative descriptions of not just the familiar world, but other dimensions: "I was somehow lost, and that feeling alone confused me. I spent my entire known existence within a human body yet spending a few years as some form of singular energy had such a profound effect that returning to a human body left me discomfited. As energy, I envied humans the ability to feel themselves, to feel their existence and yet now it only feels like a dead weight. A huge, confining barrier to all other forms of existence and intellect. I marveled at the energy expenditure required to do the simplest of tasks, like lifting my arm, or finger."
Those seeking a blend of mystery, reincarnation saga, and spiritual reflective piece will find Transcendence just the ticket with its occult story of psychological suspense and spiritual and philosophical growth.

CAUTION: This book is intended for those readers who enjoy in immersing themselves in a book of humanistic abstract thought. Thank you sincerely.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Johanna Kristin Ellerup
• Release date: Jul 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463655849

Johanna Kristin Ellerup

Johanna Kristin Ellerup is a Doctor of Pharmacy who lives in a quiet suburb in NY with her senior father and assorted and numerous beloved pets.

Book preview

A New Beginning

Copyright

Johanna Kristin Ellerup

This is a work of fiction. Apart from obvious references to public figures and/or events, the names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to people living or dead are purely coincidental.

2019

Johanna Kristin Ellerup

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, nor in any language without the express written permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America

This novel is dedicated to my parents,

Johanna Kristin Sigurjonsdottir Ellerup

and

Frode Kristinn Ellerup,

family and friends.

It is also dedicated to rescue pets,

those that provide them with shelter

and

those that adopt.

Author's Note

The story you are about to read is the alternate, or as befitting its nature, the parallel version of its predecessor, Transcendence.

Transcendence is a novel of, for this author, experimental design where not a single human character is named, requiring the reader to suspend the traditional novel format and transcend into their heightened imagination. This was done to heighten the novel’s ethereal and arcing premise, that of lives reborn and second chances proffered by multidimensional entities

This version is released with named characters.

The main character finds herself within a quantum parallel universe and narrates the story from that perspective.

The soul of Transcendence, the premise that no matter how bad life gets, no matter how many mistakes one makes, there is always a chance to transcend, continues.

Thank you

Reviews

"A much more ethereal and spiritual tone than other stories of reincarnation.

Johanna Kristin Ellerup weaves a tale that incorporates many unusual facets throughout. Readers should cultivate flexibility as they pursue a mercurial story that delves into these different lives and realizations. Any such effort will be well rewarded with a story that is poignant, revealing, and filled with evocative descriptions of not just the familiar world, but other dimensions."

D.Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Kirkus Review - the tale’s dialogue, which, despite grappling with metaphysical ideas, is natural and affable... The interpersonal relationships and friendships this mysticism or extrasensory perception facilitates are warm and welcoming.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Authors_Note

Reviews

Chapter_One

Chapter_Two

Chapter_Three

Chapter_Four

Chapter_Five

Chapter_Six

Chapter_Seven

Chapter_Eight

Chapter_Nine

Chapter_Ten

Chapter_Eleven

Chapter_Twelve

Chapter_Thirteen

Chapter_Fourteen

Chapter_Fifteen

Chapter_Sixteen

Chapter_Seventeen

Chapter_Eighteen

Chapter_Nineteen

Chapter_Twenty

Chapter_Twenty_One

Chapter_Twenty_Two

Chapter One

It was bitterly cold the day I died.

Unusual for April.

The wind chill left a rosy hue on my nose and cheeks. When I finally crossed the lot to where my car was parked, I was slightly tingly all over. I started the engine, waited for it to warm up and searched the radio dial for something to get my blood pumping, to distract me from the weather and the odd events in my life. I looked out the driver’s side window and pondered my life. Here I was a grown woman convinced that the corporation with which I worked for six years was committing egregious criminal acts of narcotic diversion and money laundering. Without any real evidence of this egregious criminal act, by the way. The only thing I had were numbers that didn’t add up and quite possibly an overly suspicious mind.

Attempting to explain the discrepancies I uncovered had almost consumed my life. I committed acts of corporate espionage, even going so far as to download files from a coworker’s computer and all of it for nothing. I had no evidence that anything untoward was taking place. Yes, the corporation’s satellite companies were inexplicably losing money. Yes, there was a disproportionate increase in the number of narcotics ordered, yes, damn it!

YES! There was something criminal going on! I’m right!

What happens next plays like a live video stream in my memory. I start to drive out of the lot and notice a slight icy sheen to the pavement. I test the car’s traction using the steering wheel and brakes at low speed and decide that it is safe. I stop at the lot exit and peer down the intersecting roadway before I enter. There is no traffic coming towards me from the left, so I crane my neck to the right to check for pedestrians when suddenly I lurch forward with such force that I feel the steering wheel hit my solar plexus. The car is pitched forward as if lifted from behind. I am now staring, winded, out my front windshield as I and the car are being moved across the four-lane street. I watch, transfixed with horror, as the corner of a stone building moves at an indiscernibly fast rate of speed closer and closer. The car hits the curb, and I am jarred back and forth. With both feet pumping the brake, I let out a scream of abject, uncontrolled horror as the building chews through the fiberglass, metal and finally glass that leads to darkness.

Absolute darkness.

An engulfing, all-encompassing darkness.

From another place, or time, words are present in the darkness. I am aware of ‘speeding and the toxicology screen will be positive for opioids’ then farther away, in place or time, I don’t know which, the darkness reveals ‘will be?’

Darkness. There is darkness everywhere. And silence.

Yet the darkness whirls. Endless swirling darkness of both sound and light.

I am the darkness, and it is me. Yet I am moving, swirling through it without movement. I am within a vibrational existence without sound or light. Instantaneous and cyclic waves of expansion and contraction in every direction draw me everywhere and nowhere. I see nothing, and at the same time, I am aware that there is nothing to see. I am also aware that I am alone but not by myself; I am independently apart of everything. There are others here, I can feel it, even without the use of my known senses. Their presence or absence causes fluctuations within me and all around me. I feel nothing but sense everything. I am acutely aware.

The vibrations have slowed down rather suddenly. Spots of color start to materialize in the darkness in front of me, but I don’t know what they are or what they are supposed to be.

There are more of them now and even more now.

Akin to a digital picture being downloaded on a very slow computer, sequentially one labored pixel at a time, an image is brought forth from the darkness. I can begin to make out the image. It’s a room. A living room or den with a bookshelf and, yes, that’s a glass doorway to an outside area. The elements that I sensed within the darkness are now orbs of vibration rushing passed me from behind, achieving color as they near the image. I now use the term orbs for want of a better term.

As the image continues its approach, becoming clearer and larger, I realize that they interact with each other and the objects contained therein, streaking through the darkness without color or shape and appearing within the image as colored orbs. Occasionally, within the multicolored swirl of molten energy, I imagine that I can make out human faces. Their kinetic energy explodes visually once they near the horizon of the image, increasing upon entering the image as they dart chaotically around the room with no apparent course or reason.

As I am drawn closer, sensing the vibrations within/without me slow at the same rate, I am decelerating, rapidly. The image now encompasses the entire field of view in front of me like a floor to ceiling movie screen. I look to the side and watch as I pass through a quivering membrane between the darkness and the light. A shudder ripples through me. The constant hum of vibrations within is almost undetectable.

I am now in the room.

I understand all of that. Really. But since you have received all the documents related to his death months ago, why is the issue not resolved? The voice was that of a female stationed outside the original picture frame, somewhere to my right. There, at a well-loved, old oak desk sits an older woman talking on the phone. It’s a corded phone placed on the opposite end of the desk from a computer. Miriam appears to be in her late seventies or so, with soft, muted features and silver-tinged white hair that contrasts her deep brown skin elegantly. The image is a warm, pleasing one. I am aware, while in her presence, that she is a woman of courage, integrity and a spitfire passion that has gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion in her life. She grew up surrounded by family and has had several loves, two that burn brightly within her, but she is alone now. Never truly lonely, just alone.

I see the orbs of light now flittering across the room, willy-nilly. They huddle around her during the phone conversation, seemingly attracted to the emotions the conversation induces in her. They quickly change colors split seconds before a change in her emotions, and at each change in emotions. I am unable to deduce a color-emotion pattern, such as red equaling anger, only that the colors are red, green and blue. I am also unable to discern whether the colors are related to her emotions or theirs at the interaction.

The vibrations are muted now, as to make me feel almost solid as I stand before her. I realize that it’s a false perception since she doesn’t react as if a person appeared out of nothing right in front of her. She takes no notice of colored orbs, me or anything other than the unseen person on the other end of the conversation. Although she maintains a semblance of balance in emotion and tone, it is obvious by her energy state that either the topic or person has evoked her passions, and she is struggling to bring the conversation to a close.

Miriam’s emotions emanate from her in distinct waves that I intuit immediately. She wants them all to leave her alone, I understand. Everyone. Everywhere. It’s over. She has finished grieving and wants them to stop forcing her to re-live uncomfortable memories. She loved him, steadily and faithfully, and wants to be in peace in her remembrance of him. She wants to settle within her grief, privately, without strangers lingering on the edge of memories that don’t belong to them. She merely wants the remainder of him, the all of him that she has left, to be hers and hers alone.

Theirs was not a possessive love. These are her most selfish moments with him.

She needs the world to know by her silence that her grief, her sorrow, her separation from him is hers, not to be pitied or shared with anyone else. She hangs up the phone in frustration and emits a barely audible sigh that nonetheless fills the room with emptiness. The orbs flutter, changing colors slowly at this point, and flit passed her again and again. I turn to look up towards the corner at the farthest end of the room, opposite the glass doors, where they appear and disappear, exist then cease to exist.

I know that that was where I came in.

I experience myself now as I have always done, as a corporeal being, and simply stand there. Reverently absorbing the energy of this powerful woman and the emanating field of her ebbing emotions. A complete understanding of her character envelopes me without any effort on my part. I know her. I also know what I am to do. I am acutely aware that each event will happen in a sequence that neither she nor I can stop, that it can only happen in that sequence, and that both of us are vital for the sequence to take place at every point. I know that we are inexorably bound together, but I do not know the how or the why of it. Neither of us had any choice in the events of the past or the present. We just are.

She pushes away from the desk and stands to walk through the sliding glass doors to the outside yard.

I linger.

I absorb.

Eventually, I follow.

Chapter Two

MIRIAM’S STORY

Miriam’s parents had been kind people who proved throughout her life to be both rational and ardently passionate. Good humor and generosity were as nourishment to each other and those around them. During her youth things had been difficult, sometimes extremely so, but neither of her parents took it personally, so she didn’t either. That was a gift she wouldn’t come to appreciate until well into adulthood. They fostered a secure and respectful ease in conversation and expression, even when they quarreled or debated, that she grew to recognize as uncommon in other relationships. This encouraged the same open communication amongst her siblings and others with which they dealt. She was a grown woman before she was fortunate enough to experience it again for herself in her own marriage.

Miriam had made a careful study of her parents during that time in one’s tender youth when the outside world gathers prominence in the estimation of one’s private existence. Her father’s appearance was that of any ordinary dark haired, dark skinned man of Asian descent with a physique that revealed a love of physical labor. His face was, well quite honestly, rather bland, feature wise. She loved him and always found him to be handsome because he was her father, but she concluded that, on average, he was precisely that. Average. He easily blended in with other men both in personality and appearance and never went out of his way to intentionally draw attention to himself. There was literally nothing about him that would, by conventional standards, draw exceptional attention.

Yet, his presence did command inordinate attention. He possessed that certain indefinable quality, that particular something that others seem to crave. Miriam’s mother claimed to be the only woman who was immune to his magnetic charm. Her mother was in her late twenties when they met, he in his early thirties. In contrast to her father, she found her mother to be a vision of pure beauty and refinement. To Miriam, her mother embodied all that which is feminine mystique and nurturing, self-sacrificing motherhood. Her exterior physical characteristics were perfectly matched to the gentle, yet courageous spiritual interior. As she herself developed, during the gender-based, self-reflection of adolescence, she found her physical characteristics sorely lacking when compared to those of her mother. Miriam inherited neither the flowing black hair nor her soft voice. Those gifts were given to, and cherished by, her two older sisters. Her mother’s long, thin neck and legs were bestowed upon her older brother, and they suited him well. She was of average height, her neck was rather short, her hair was dark brown and her voice perfect in its plainness. She was, by her estimation, exceptionally ordinary and, after having decided this, filed it away in her mind as an established fact. She spent the remainder of her life believing that she hadn’t inherited anything of value from either of them. She was partially correct.

Miriam believed this in part, as with people of her kind, because she was completely oblivious to the power she held. She was ignorant of the effect her presence had on those around her. If she had heard the secret whisperings of others, she would have puzzled at comments such as, ‘mesmerizing gaze,’ ‘thought-provoking intuition,’ ‘captivating beauty’ and ‘ethereal charm.’ What she herself never knew was that her parents ‘gifts’ were not evident in her like in a mirror or picture. Instead, they melded into a being of such overwhelming charisma and gentleness of soul that no one ever dared mention it for fear of altering it in some way. Miriam never knew. Instead, she spent every day of her life believing she was the least self-possessed, least graceful, least persuasive, least everything person she would ever encounter.

One humid summer evening of her twenty-fourth year, she decided to stop on her way home, at the vegetable stand on 48th street and Wilkers to buy the largest, sweetest honeydew she could find. She wandered easily through the barren streets allowing the breeze to billow her skirt around her legs. Twilight, this time of night, was her favorite part of the day. Especially during the summer, when the cool breeze is ripe