During this entire time, Casey and Marisa were in the food court eating edible things. Had they known there was a zombie invasion, they would have gladly helped, but for some reason, neither Zack, Jason, nor Evan remembered to get them. Thus, having nothing better to do, they sat down and chatted.
"Man, we've been stuck here for what, two months now?" asked Casey, stabbing an eggroll with her fork, "Do you think things will ever go back to normal?"
Marisa sighed. "I don't know," she said, "If it does, it won't be for a while."
"Maybe things are already back to normal?" said Casey, "Or maybe they never got abnormal in the first place. You know how it is."
"What do you mean?" asked Marisa, opening a ketchup packet for her tater tots. "Do you mean to say at this point, we might as well call hiding in a mall from zombies normal?"
"No," said Casey, "I was referring to linear time being an illusion. There is no past and no future. There is only now, which intersects with the singularity we consider our consciousness."
"I had a vision of eternity once," said Marisa, "I saw the point of space time as a whole. All of time and space filled my awareness."
"Whoa, what happened?" asked Casey, sipping some chicken noodle soup which she had bought from McDonalds.
"I went insane," replied Marisa, "I was taken to a mental asylum. They put me in a straightjacket. You see, I had this APUSH test and they asked me what the date was of the inauguration of Severus Snape. Well, after that experience, I realized that all dates were one date and all moments were one moment, and that just as a diamond prism reflects a certain aspect of light, so does the human consciousness reflect a certain aspect of the eternal moment. Therefore, whenever I am asked when something happened, whether in the reign of Washington or Bush, I always reply 'now,' because all moments of time are contained in the present."
"You've crossed the abyss that is the illusion of spatial-temporal separation," said Casey, "You need to stablize the bridge so you can shift gears between your meditational trance and your everyday awareness. I'm not sure how though"
"Oh I've been thinking about it," said Marisa, "Thunderstorms are nice. I spoke with one about a week and a half ago actually. He had a pretty gruff voice, and I asked him a bit about the nature of the various forms of tension between charges that work together to form lightening as well as the equivalent forms of this tension within the personalities of human beings and society at large. In addition, we spoke about utilizing lightening to overcome barriers and cross the various abysses that manifest at all levels of life."
As if in reply to Marisa, a roar that sounded like thunder filled the air.
"Huh, looks like we're in for quite a storm," said Marisa.
"Yeah, but then again, it's not like we're ever leaving this building again. At least not while the zombies are out there." As she spoke, Casey's eyes grew melancholy as she realized she might never again see the beloved sky or feel the sun on her face without getting her ears chewed off by the living dead. Unbeknownst to both of them, the sound was not thunder, but the JCPenney downstairs blowing up after Brian accidentally fired two proton torpedoes into it.
"You know," said Casey, still thinking about the natural world she considered lost to her, "When I focus on my breath while meditating, I'll often get random visions of the sky, as well as a sensation of the perfect clarity of the air in the upper atmosphere. Sometimes, if I begin to contemplate the image, I'll begin to feel I actually am the sky, haha, and I'll get with it a sensation of detached joy that I feel is probably something similar to the state of mind Buddha lived his life in. Like, my awareness just kind of stretches to infinity without end and is able to contain within itself any storm or hurricane without being bothered. It's nice to try to recreate the sensation in everyday life if I feel particularly stressed. If I become like the sky, then everything that's bothering me just passes through me without changing or affecting me and I can see everything objectively from a bigger picture. Sometimes, if things are really bad, I'll make use of the night sky and think about those regions between the stars where you can stare into infinity. People often come up with constellations based on the stars but the other day, I was trying to come up with a few constellations based on the points of darkness between the stars and I came up with several, including one that looked like a very angry flash drive."
"The night sky has many mysteries of its own," replied Marisa, "Those who know the secrets of Magistra's Car Tire may direct the rays of that most potent of constellations to sink entire continents, but this is very advanced magic. Sometimes, if I stare too long into the darkness while taking a walk at night, like I used to do quite often before civilization ended, I'll become absorbed into it and lose myself and then, it's like my awareness is completely formless and I consist of nothing but emptiness and nothing exists but emptiness and neither space nor time are relevant or even exist and I could remain in this state forever until I fall down and my rib slams against the sidewalk because I am so out of it these days and then I have to think really hard to remember where I am and what direction I have to travel to get to my house. But yeah, as far as your meditation goes, technically, all those images and sensations are distractions. I mean, it's nice, but you're supposed to remain focused on the physical feeling of your breath, so whenever that happens to me, I'll force my mind back to counting, inhaling for four heartbeats, holding for four heartbeats, exhaling for four heartbeats, and holding again for four heartbeats but then, when I focus on my heartbeats, which I use to count the length my breaths and retentions, my mind immediately turns also to my blood and the various arteries and veins that run through my body and, just like when I focus on my kidneys when practicing body awareness, I'll start to feel as if my blood vessels are the rivers and streams of the world that flow not just through space but through time as well just like how Lao Tzu describes the Tao in the Tao Te Ching or that all fluids in my body constitute a vast ocean with no shores and I will feel within myself the same nurturing, supporting, healing, and loving energy that brought all life into being. Sometimes, when I do this at night, I'll see and feel the entire universe with all its stars and galaxies reflected within myself. Sometimes, I'll shrink my awareness down to a specific deep trench like the Mariana Trench which is always nice because here, it is so peaceful and quiet because the deeper layers of the ocean remain still no matter how violent the storms are at its surface. Sometimes, I'll go up to the north pole and become one of the icebergs there. Some of the ice has been around longer than the human race actually and I kind of feel like a crystal ball of sorts and during the winter months where it is dark for 6 months straight, I am inspired by my surroundings to explore and pass through the darkness within myself by confronting my shadow and integrating it back into myself instead of repressing and hiding it in the deepest parts of my subconscious mind. Sometimes, I'll break in waves against some shore of a tropical island, or I'll pass by a megaladon and realize somehow, I ended up travelling back in time during the process of all this, and then, because I'm tired, I'll relax and dissolve into trillions of waves or maybe, if I have some energy left, I'll become a humpback whale and migrate up and down the oceans while singing out to my friends and that deep beautiful voice that they have, or maybe I'll.."
Marisa stopped talking when one of Kayla's teddy bears bumped into her. As she spoke, she had been so focused on what she was saying and Casey had been so focused on listening to her that neither had noticed the zombies swarming around them. In fact, they had been so absorbed in their conversation that the zombies had not noticed them.
"What the heck?" asked Casey, "So, I guess we have to find a new hiding place. Oh wait, where did all these teddy bears come from? Ok, I am really confused right now."
Marisa, deciding she didn't even want to know, returned to eating her whatever it was she had ordered for lunch that day.