Awaken Now— Celena’s Message

A hologram from the future offers a sobering warning to humanity, caught in the momentum of creating dystopia without lucid awareness.

* * * * *

UK, 2022

“Did you see any cops?” Poppy asked as Lynx stepped over a hay barrel.

“I’m telling you, it’s more a social media hype than reality. I just saw a bunch of scared people with masks. I’ll wear mine around them, but as soon as I’m down a dirt road, I’m breathing fresh air again.”

“Do you like them?” Poppy gestured to the ceiling. The old barn glittered with new installations of hanging crystals. They cast rainbows across high beams, making the space feel a bit more magical.

Lynx grinned. “Gorgeous. When the world stops pretending it’s Doomsday, maybe you can be an interior designer.”

Poppy’s eyes lit up. “The interior designer and the brilliant botanist. We make quite the team.”

Lynx winked. “That we do. Which brings me to why I called this meeting today. I got this necklace, but it’s more than a necklace. It’s very advanced tech. The 2020s couldn’t get any weirder, right?” Lynx pulled out a little locket.

Poppy took the delicate piece in her hand and turned it over. “It’s enscripted. For someone ready to see the future, who can re-write the past. That’s bizarre. Let’s open it.”

The two crouched on the floor, foreheads almost touching. The whole barn went dark and a text in neon purple appeared:

Where two or more are gathered, there I AM.

“Second person detected. Loading transmission,” a cool feminine voice boomed from the tiny piece.

“What the—”

Lynx and Poppy leapt back as the locket began to vibrate. A series of beeps and whirrs sounded and the form of a woman rapidly pixelated. Life-sized and realistic, she donned robes that gently billowed in an invisible wind. A fitted diadem complimented her long silver hair. Her face shone with beauty and her eyes with wisdom. Save for the simple band slowly blinking on her wrist, she looked practically mythological. The two youths crept forward, open-mouthed as the hologram began to speak.

“Greetings from another dimension,” the woman spoke. Her voice was soft yet strong, and undeniably human. “It is the year 2080. If you are receiving this transmission, we sincerely hope it is within the timespan of ten years from the date.”

“2080? Is this a joke?”

“This message is for the people of Earth along the descending timelines. If you let it all the way into your heart, your world’s trajectory can change. We chose the heart-shaped locket for a reason. The mind has made a mess of things and its 2000+ year reign is over. Humanity must return to the heart, or it is game over.’’

“What is this?” Lynx whispered. Poppy shook her head in refusal to speak, remaining transfixed.

“My name is Celena,” the hologram continued with a smile. “We, the people of the highest timeline, opened a wormhole to send you this transmission. It is pre-recorded, yet intended to speak to individuals. We intend for it to reach many.

You may be stuck on opening a wormhole. This became possible when we recalled our star origins. We no longer pretend that being human means being disconnected from the cosmos. In fact, life gets so much easier when you recall that you are from the stars.

I speak to you not from some unattainable realm of utopia or enlightenment. I come from people who faced the same challenges as you, those who peered down a timeline perpetuated by the momentum of the status quo and saw only dystopia, total apocalypse.

But instead of accepting this fate as inevitable, we stared planetary terror in the face and decided to wrangle the courage to chart a course of our own human destiny.”

Celena took a deep breath. Poppy and Lynx looked at each other, both wide-eyed and stunned.

“Around the year 2030, a timeline split occurred, which literally tore apart the Earth. This transmission comes to you from the timeline filled with people who heeded the warnings, who believed in their genius. This is a reality we currently inhabit and one that we invite you to.

This message is a way out. Humanity creates insanity with its ignorant use of universal principles. You live in a vibrational universe with multiple realities possible in any given moment. It is science. It is law. If you refuse to acknowledge this and maintain the status quo of sleepwalking, you undeniably face complete and total annihilation, and you are making it that way.”

Celena closed her eyes and took a breath.

“This may sound harsh, but you need to hear it. I am the canary in the coal mine.”

Text appeared in the same purple font.

You are complacent; you must be radical.

You insist on playing the victim; you self-perpetuate your very victimhood.

You fight the old; you must dedicate the rest of your life to building the new.

The words vanished. She opened her eyes and spoke with a depth of conviction. “But as long as there is a single tree within a ten mile radius when this message reaches you, there is hope. And hope is the first ingredient you need to turn the ship around.

Part 2 of this transmission will be available in 24 hours.”

The locket shuddered and snapped shut.

* * * * *

Poppy walked home in a light rain. The trees stood silently, radiating beauty and oxygen as just a few kilometers away, a war of the minds raged within the people, their consciousness ignorant of life and hooked into machines. Here alone, Poppy looked at them differently. One of Celena’s sentences echoed with crystal clarity: “As long as there is a single tree within a ten mile radius, there is hope.”

“Could it be so simple?” She pondered. But a deep part within recognized the truth. She and Lynx had become friends because of a shared resilience, an almost stubborn insistence that there was hope in this broken world.

Other teens didn’t feel the same. They were content to eat without thinking of health, live and interact through avatars, retreat into virtual worlds with aesthetics from past decades. But some people knew that filters couldn’t keep out reality forever.

* * * * *

“The second transmission will be accompanied by a visual component, because words only go so far. It’s important for you to know what happened before the timeline split.” Lynx and Poppy sat on the floor of the old barn, captivated by the hologram. All of life had blurred for both of them to the moment when they could continue with Celena.

The globe and the date 2000 emerged with Celena’s voiceover. “The new millennium struggled to figure itself out. After a century of self-examination and two world wars, a new revolution dawned as the internet became available en masse. And because of a blanket of anonymity, the deepest of humanity’s shadows exploded into virtuality. But it was mostly harmless at this point.”

Celena paused. The date above the Earth changed to 2011 as planetary green and blue noticeably dimmed.

“But around the 2010s, new platforms with appealing features appeared and technology became a source of personal identity. Filters simulated injections of plastic and silicone. Everything artificial was embraced, because it became the norm. By the time anyone caught on, it was addictive, too powerful to stop. Infinite scroll. Ever-evolving algorithms. AI.”

The hologram began to shuffle through images both Poppy and Lynx recognized as daily life: watching TV, scrolling through social media, flying drones. The year read 2018.

“People started sleeping with their tech, then wearing it for health or productivity. A matrix of surveillance rolled out with the people’s total consent. There was talk of uploading consciousness… I don’t know what happened, because I tuned it all out in 2025, but I can imagine it coming to pass.”

Snippets of well-known movies depicting tsunamis, zombies, viral outbreaks, volcano explosions, and alien invasions looped, one after the other, with flashes of titles appearing in foreboding massive texts: TAKEOVER. WAR. ATTACK. ANNIHILATION.

“We wrote stories about dystopia, fanatically. Entire genres, aesthetics, even contests were made. Best costume, best short story. We were fascinated with fallout. We took no ethical responsibility for our creations.”

“This is why I always liked vintage,” Poppy whispered to her friend.

“Meanwhile, the life force of the planet was being choked. Perhaps our fixation was avoidance, or because we sensed the inevitability of a necessary change.” Celena paused. “Well, it came.”

2028. The globe noticeably lacked color and lustre. Images of people wearing masks, drought and floods, and political unrest filled the projection.

“The 2020s marked the last decade before the timeline split. The lag time of manifestation collapsed— meaning people created their reality whether consciously or not. Before 2020, you could weigh differing perspectives. You could consume fiction and have it just be fiction. But as the split grew nearer, so did polarity: those insistent on apocalypse and those on a New Earth. People who wished to abstain from choice were unable to. There was no more fence sitting. And neither high rises nor ivory towers could keep us safe.”

The hologram depicted the globe vibrating and beginning to tear in two— one Earth became dull and lifeless, and the other regained green and vibrant blue. The image flickered and returned to Celena.

“I cannot tell you what happened after, because there was no longer consensus reality. Myself and others like me became obsessed with creating the New Earth like our life depended on it. It did. The future of the planet depended on it.”

Gardens. Sunlight. Clean running water. Laughing healthy children. And a group of waving people with eyes shining like Celena’s.

“We made it. Here is the proof. See what it’s like when humanity returns to nature’s wisdom, to our roots. We remembered the ancient and the everlasting to pioneer a future. We based our architecture in fractal geometry. We learned from our mistakes. History no longer repeats itself— we create a new world.

So now you know: you can use personal and collective imagination to create dystopia or redemption.

If you wish to escape/transcend the descending timeline, you must reflect on how you’re perpetuating dystopia. Take a ruthless knife to your innermost parts, and scan what exists within you that chokes out hope for a prosperous future. Because as long as trees offer the breath of life,” Celena declared triumphantly, “there is hope. What people need to do is rediscover their humanity— remember they are made of Earth and Water.”

She paused, breathing deeply.

“I invite you to join me now. Take some deep breaths.”

Lynx and Poppy closed their eyes and followed their guide.

“Take your time. Most lower timelines are severely under-oxygenated and ungrounded.

Now drop your consciousness from your head to your feet. Breathe here. When did you last take off your shoes to connect with the living Earth?

Breathe into your heart now, past all the walls that block you from feeling the pain of a dying world. Let that breath get deep into your heart, your living, beating, vulnerable human heart.”

Celena’s voice filled with tenderness.

“Allow yourself to feel it all. Crack open. Let the blow be complete, so there’s no chance of returning to who you were. You carry a new depth of responsibility.

When you have felt this momentum of planetary dystopia and the daunting but very real chance to chart a new course, then place one hand upon your beating heart and ask a single question.”

The purple text glowed as Celena spoke the sentence out loud.

What am I going to do with this one precious life?

A silence ripened. Lynx and Poppy felt their eyes glimmer with tears, each savoring every breath.

“There are additional instructions for those who are ready. To allow time for contemplation, there are 48 hours allotted before the final lesson.”

Celena smiled.

“I’ll see you soon for the last transmission.”