Immersed in Hyperion

I'm sitting in the dark room, alone, my eyes tries to make out the forms in the shadows, and I see the furniture as pieces of the past long gone. I put my feet on the small table next to my armchair, like a wanderer who spends his well-deserved rest time after a long, exhausting journey. The fireplace glooms, flames dance around each other as they consume the logs relentlessly, converting the once living wood into dead ashes. Time seems to stop, like a slow creek entering the tranquil lake, which smooth as a mirror, in the absence of the wind. My mind wonders, I'm not in the room anymore, but I rise, I ascend high, I leave the stratosphere, and enter the metasphere, where space and time circle around each other trying to decide whether they are individual forces of nature, or they belong together joining their forces and swarming into a higher being, who may be perceived as hand of God. From here the material world is only the shallow playground of the soul, the human body is small, laughable, like the carapace of an ant. I recognise shadow-like figures around me, moving in slow determination towards their destiny. They are far, far away, yet so close I could touch them. They move to the rhythm, the symphony of the metasphere, they march to the sound of the drums of the time, unable to free themselves from the bonds of the space, determined to follow their destiny and fulfil their purpose. The game is set thousands of years ago, and I see unfolding the giant plot, which interlaces the galaxies, and moves the characters as marionettes on ropes. The symphony rises into a shattering crescendo, light fills the metasphere around me, the shadows are judged to extinction and cast out of the universe, the hero is lift up above all, and the justice wins once for all. Then everything becomes silent, very still, like dreams on the surface of the lake.
I open my eyes, and tapping on my mobile I close the audiobook application. I finished Fall of Hyperion written by Dan Simmons, narrated by Victor Bevine. It's not easy to return to the real world, but I stand up, go to my desk and opening my laptop I start to write the review of the book. I type: "I'm sitting in the dark room..."
Jack enters, but doesn't say anything. He takes advantage of that I'm sitting at my working desk, so my armchair is empty, and he sits down. He sits back, stretches his legs and clutches his nape with his hands. He waits until I stop typing and stare at the screen, still trying to figure out the emotions Hyperion caused inside me. Then he asks:
"What are you working on, uncle?"
"Writing review of Fall of Hyperion."
"Ah, Fall of Hyperion. That's an interesting one. What did you write so far?"
I'm reading the text aloud for him, like reciting a poem, my voice is trembling in some places, going sublime just before the end, then settling down like a fragile butterfly on a flower. The dim light of the fireplace and the screen of my computer add a soft touch to my performance.
"That's cool!" says Jack. "But not sure it's a review."
"I know, but it's hard to put Hyperion into a few sentences. I don't know what to think about it."
"Did you like it?"
"Yes. And no."
I hardly can see Jack's face, but I can tell he frowns. So I explain:
"I liked it, because there is cool stuff in it: space travel, teleport devices, future technology, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, time paradox and such. Simmons created a believable future world. The characters are alive, detailed. The story has a huge arc of events in space and time. There are a lot of compelling ideas."
"My favourite is Uman, the super intelligent being" - says Jack. Sometimes he surprises me with his preferences of story characters.
"But I didn't like that it was too complicated" I continue. "By the end of the book I felt it's just too much. Too many subplots, too many heroes, too many places."
"I hear you, uncle, the story is really complex. You should listen to the two Hyperion books again. Maybe you can grasp the details better."
"Maybe sometime later. Now I feel overwhelmed."
"You know what? Why don't we open a bottle of vine and talk about it?"
It's not a bad idea. The situation reminds me of my childhood summer camp when we sat around the camp fire and told ghost stories. I'm not a child anymore, and the Hyperion books are not ghost stories, but they have enough mysticism to talk about them next to the fire.
"I have a bottle of red Bordeaux" I say.
Ten minutes later I'm sitting in my armchair, Jack's in the other one. We nurture our vine in our hands, and staring into the dancing flames we talk about the fascinating world of Hyperion.