VIII

Shortly after an assortment of food arrived, Gaiya noticed that she got a sushi platter among other things.

"Ohh, isn't this the staple delicacy popular on Tian?" Gaiya asked?

"Yes indeed, we modeled this place after prevalent Tian culture. The restaurant employs best chefs from most of the planets in the council, the menu never gets stale." Mars boasted.

"Travel the world, steal from the best as I say." Snickered Erot.

Erot's careless statement startled Gaiya, and she gave him a stern look, but no one seemed to mind his brazen behavior. It seemed they were good friends after all. Gaiya felt awkward, she was never comfortable with new people and it took her time to adapt. So she decided to concentrate on her food, poking her sushi with chopsticks, examining it closely, figuring and pondering which sauce to dip it in first.

Her internal monologue went something like this: 'Yes, the food here is magnificent, stop staring at me people, look at your plates, I can feel a black hole pressured into existence from the weight of your gazes, I was not mentally prepared for this.' As Gaiya internally grumbled, intent on avoiding eye contact, an awkward silence begun brewing. Leave it to Erot to drop a nuke information to stir up a fuss:

"You'll be amazed dear Gaiya, our lord Mars here was able to recall his past life twice! Not one, but two successful retentions of information."

Gaiya dropped her food, which luckily flopped back on the plate. Here gaze was immediately drawn to Mars, who in a span of nanoseconds became the most fascinating thing around.

"I don't have a double recollection, it's hard to recall anything from one lifetime, I just did it twice." Mars corrected, sounds like a standard answer, he must have had to do that often.

"It is still fascinating, having recollections not by greater design, but by sheer perseverance." Gaiya marveled.

"It's is still experimental, trial and error. But the goal is to train so that you can retain knowledge without assistance in case of cataclysmic event, or another world reincarnation." Mars didn't seem to mind explaining things to Gaiya.

"Fascinating! What a marvelous project!" Gaiya's guard fell, now that she knew that they are kindly avoiding any politics, she was all in, giving them undivided attention.

"I am more curious in Dive, few souls outside your family qualify to support Orion's connection to the nether. And you are able to do that for Thai at a time! What does it feel like?" Venera was just as thirsty with curiosity as Gaiya.

"Since you are still connected to the body, it feels like there is a membrane around you, it's like you are surrounded in mist. You instinctively know that there is vibrancy, and color and so much more outside, but you are held together by the mist and can't disperse to explore it all. Since you retain a concept of physical self, like when your body and it's sensations are re-created in a dream, you are limited in options to operate there based on our reality's concept. So in short you retain much more knowledge since you are connected to the body, but you don't really get to ascend and glean profound revelations like with reincarnation, which is incredibly frustrating. It's hard to explain." Not the first time Gaiya tried to explain this.

"Trust me, it's more frustrating to know that you know something majestic, but your consciousness is having difficulty conceptualizing it, and stumbling around trying to put a finger on it." Mars vented with a sigh.

It looked like both of them were dealing with two sides of the same problematic coin; and as on cue both turned their attentions back to food in full gloom, washing down sorrow with delicious vine.

"But what about time? How does it flow there?" Venera wasn't letting go of her prey.

Gaya grimaced.

"It just is. If you compare it to a running river here, it's like infinite ocean there. The only visual I can give you is from when I was a kid, the rest of my experience with it was intuitive. I was worried about something, something silly like a minor project but for a kid it was a big deal. So I was standing there, felt incredibly lonely in that mist. Then what felt like a familiar being showed up, you could tell it was projecting itself to my level. Focusing beyond you could tell there was more of them and there was more to them, like looking at 3-d shadow of an incomprehensible being, hard to perceive, like looking through a prism of sorts. Anyway, it was conveyed to me not to worry, and if I wanted I could check it out if I just perceive a way to look. So as a kid I thought of a telescope. And there was a tourist telescope, as if it was there the whole time standing on a pedestal, through which I looked at a spot in general direction I was told. From there I could perceive the whole reality of the situation. Got all excited, about this and that, snooping on things, I think the kind being advised caution which was ignored in all the thrill of it all. Anyway, since we can retain and process only so much information, I didn't recall much upon coming back from the dive, just a jumble of impressions from different things I tried to look into, and a general sixth sense that the project will be fine when I thought about it again." Gaiya awkwardly tried to paint a picture as best as she could.

"Awesome! So you can look things up if you wanted?" Exclaimed Venera.

"Not really, at this point it is hard to tell what moment of time my physical body is in our reality. So you might be looking into past memories, and if you are too giddy about an outcome, you might conjure up wishful visions, since you are interpreting nether to your world view it's hard to tell what belongs there and what you made up. Sometimes you perceive your entire reality by accident, but since it is already all there it makes no sense to analyze particular events at the time. I think that's where the sixth sense comes from about particular choices and their consequences, from the imprint of that experience. But don't quote me on that."