THE GLASS DOORS
CHAPTER 48-50
CHAPTER 48
Commensurate
The Gamic and Wisp had maintained their network of Relay Bunts throughout the universe, including around Earth. The two species were totally unaware of the Prog Bunt dongle that had been attached to the Arada Relay Bunts which then provided the mechanism for mind-control. I had to inform the Gamic and Wisp of what Bill Fey and the Feygit Arada were doing.
I observed as much of the Prog Bunt technology as I could through the Bigot Star’s cosmic show. I committed the specifications to memory. The languages were alien, but the parts, assembly, and process could be described in laymen terms, while the Gamic and Wisp had the means to learn modern English and translate it.
I needed to be returned if I was going to help, but because the Bigot Star could read my thoughts, it had already happened. The darkness of the space in the universe for the cosmic show became the stark ground at my feet. The scene transitioned slowly as if I had just rubbed my eyes very hard and the stars of the universe for the Bigot Star’s cosmic show faded, and I could see that I was standing on the strip of road where the Bigot Star had nabbed me to reveal the origin of the physical universe.
It was time to rush home and write down everything that I had learned about the Prog Bunt technology. Then, I would have to devise some way to get the attention of the Gamic and Wisp. I didn’t sleep for three nights as I frantically scrawled every last detail of what I remembered cover to cover in two large notebooks. I didn’t know how to get Gamic and Wisp attention, and the last thing that should happen was that the Feygit Arada find out what I know.
Would I just stand outside, raise my arms, and wave my hands back and forth like an idiot? I considered that Bill Fey had been alerted to me because I had been talking about the crusades in conspiratorial terms, and he had been watching out for that and wanted those kinds of voices silenced. Indeed there was a Crusader Cabal, and Bill Fey was its master. By the same logic, was there a topic that I could present which would draw the attention of the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts?
I found another notebook and began writing out the specifications for the antimission torus. I was not a physicist, and I had no real idea about the science behind the technology, but I was able to describe the technology conceptually, and in great detail. I completed the third notebook the next day, and finally took the time to sleep.
The start of the following week, I packaged up the three notebooks and mailed them to a team of physicists at Caltech who I read about online. The team had been pioneering advancements in wormhole technology. I added a juicy greeting that ensured the notebooks would at least be perused. My greeting was a one-page letter explaining that I was a defector from China as well as the son of a high-ranking physicist at one of China’s leading labs. I explained that I could not have sent my father’s work without being caught, but that I translated some of it into a more colloquially presentation, such that, if the government had discovered my package, they would not have believed it was confidential scientific research, and therefore, no harm would come to my family. In my greeting note, I added that I had sent the package first to a friend in Toronto who was instructed to send it onto the team of physicists at Caltech. It was a far-fetched fandangle of a tall tale, but it was worth a shot.
Weeks passed and I laid low not giving the Feygit Arada any reason to pay attention to me. I faked having stomach flu to avoid spending time with my parents. Heath called and seemed desperate to meet up. That made me very nervous based on the timing. Nevertheless, I met Heath at the glass doors – that old high school hangout – and he let me know that he needed help because he didn’t think his anti-psychotic medication was working anymore. In some ways, I was relieved that his problem was relatively pedestrian, and not something that would have impinged on my own twisted reality.
Heath and I spoke at length regarding his options, and then I noticed something odd around me. The ‘glass doors’ was a busy midtown intersection of a large, urban metropolis, and thousands of people passed through it each day. But, right there and then, I swore that I had caught a glimpse of Gamic features on one woman’s face who walked by while I was listening to Heath’s anxious diatribe about medication.
There it was again – a male Wisp face this time.
Each time that I turned my body to track the alien walking past me, another was coming toward me. I spun around slowly a few times until I realized that all the people around me were Gamic and Wisp but dressed as humans and going about their everyday activities. They paid me no mind. I looked for Heath, but he had disappeared. Then, I felt it.
A friendly, little push against the back of my head. I swung around and it was the Bigot Star, however, it was the Bigot Star head with its gentle golden glow, on top of a human body. It extended its hand. I looked down. The hand was human. The Bigot Star tilted its head as if to show embarrassment for having been a bad friend all these years. I extended courtesy and shook the Bigot Star’s hand, and now we were friends.
The handshake had a warmth to it but also a firmness that was non-judgmental. The handshake had no ulterior motive. I realized that it hadn’t been a Bigot Star at all, but rather, it was my Guiding Light. The Guiding Light spoke, and he was cool just like Johnny Depp. So, I gave him an inch, and he appreciated that a great deal.
He led me through the glass doors, and we descended the escalator which connected with the entrance to the underground subway. The subway station exit gate opened for us, and he casually walked through without paying his fare. I followed in stride. We descended the next set of stairs to the train platform. The platform was improbably empty, and I suspected that I had entered his realm.
He jumped onto the subway tracks and looked back waiting for me to bravely follow. I jumped down as well, and we continued walking through the tunnel. We entered the dark subway tunnel just the two of us. He no longer looked back at me, and I was almost walking beside him.
The tunnel got dark. Very dark. Then, there was a light and I assumed it was a subway speeding across the tracks. The Guiding Light kept walking unaffected by the oncoming subway. I trusted this cosmic being now. I accepted death through his stewardship. I was his charge.
The subway never hit me, and the oncoming light turned out to be him sitting across from me once last time at our cosmic games table. He had a final story to show me. It was his own.
Commensurate
The Gamic and Wisp had maintained their network of Relay Bunts throughout the universe, including around Earth. The two species were totally unaware of the Prog Bunt dongle that had been attached to the Arada Relay Bunts which then provided the mechanism for mind-control. I had to inform the Gamic and Wisp of what Bill Fey and the Feygit Arada were doing.
I observed as much of the Prog Bunt technology as I could through the Bigot Star’s cosmic show. I committed the specifications to memory. The languages were alien, but the parts, assembly, and process could be described in laymen terms, while the Gamic and Wisp had the means to learn modern English and translate it.
I needed to be returned if I was going to help, but because the Bigot Star could read my thoughts, it had already happened. The darkness of the space in the universe for the cosmic show became the stark ground at my feet. The scene transitioned slowly as if I had just rubbed my eyes very hard and the stars of the universe for the Bigot Star’s cosmic show faded, and I could see that I was standing on the strip of road where the Bigot Star had nabbed me to reveal the origin of the physical universe.
It was time to rush home and write down everything that I had learned about the Prog Bunt technology. Then, I would have to devise some way to get the attention of the Gamic and Wisp. I didn’t sleep for three nights as I frantically scrawled every last detail of what I remembered cover to cover in two large notebooks. I didn’t know how to get Gamic and Wisp attention, and the last thing that should happen was that the Feygit Arada find out what I know.
Would I just stand outside, raise my arms, and wave my hands back and forth like an idiot? I considered that Bill Fey had been alerted to me because I had been talking about the crusades in conspiratorial terms, and he had been watching out for that and wanted those kinds of voices silenced. Indeed there was a Crusader Cabal, and Bill Fey was its master. By the same logic, was there a topic that I could present which would draw the attention of the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts?
I found another notebook and began writing out the specifications for the antimission torus. I was not a physicist, and I had no real idea about the science behind the technology, but I was able to describe the technology conceptually, and in great detail. I completed the third notebook the next day, and finally took the time to sleep.
The start of the following week, I packaged up the three notebooks and mailed them to a team of physicists at Caltech who I read about online. The team had been pioneering advancements in wormhole technology. I added a juicy greeting that ensured the notebooks would at least be perused. My greeting was a one-page letter explaining that I was a defector from China as well as the son of a high-ranking physicist at one of China’s leading labs. I explained that I could not have sent my father’s work without being caught, but that I translated some of it into a more colloquially presentation, such that, if the government had discovered my package, they would not have believed it was confidential scientific research, and therefore, no harm would come to my family. In my greeting note, I added that I had sent the package first to a friend in Toronto who was instructed to send it onto the team of physicists at Caltech. It was a far-fetched fandangle of a tall tale, but it was worth a shot.
Weeks passed and I laid low not giving the Feygit Arada any reason to pay attention to me. I faked having stomach flu to avoid spending time with my parents. Heath called and seemed desperate to meet up. That made me very nervous based on the timing. Nevertheless, I met Heath at the glass doors – that old high school hangout – and he let me know that he needed help because he didn’t think his anti-psychotic medication was working anymore. In some ways, I was relieved that his problem was relatively pedestrian, and not something that would have impinged on my own twisted reality.
Heath and I spoke at length regarding his options, and then I noticed something odd around me. The ‘glass doors’ was a busy midtown intersection of a large, urban metropolis, and thousands of people passed through it each day. But, right there and then, I swore that I had caught a glimpse of Gamic features on one woman’s face who walked by while I was listening to Heath’s anxious diatribe about medication.
There it was again – a male Wisp face this time.
Each time that I turned my body to track the alien walking past me, another was coming toward me. I spun around slowly a few times until I realized that all the people around me were Gamic and Wisp but dressed as humans and going about their everyday activities. They paid me no mind. I looked for Heath, but he had disappeared. Then, I felt it.
A friendly, little push against the back of my head. I swung around and it was the Bigot Star, however, it was the Bigot Star head with its gentle golden glow, on top of a human body. It extended its hand. I looked down. The hand was human. The Bigot Star tilted its head as if to show embarrassment for having been a bad friend all these years. I extended courtesy and shook the Bigot Star’s hand, and now we were friends.
The handshake had a warmth to it but also a firmness that was non-judgmental. The handshake had no ulterior motive. I realized that it hadn’t been a Bigot Star at all, but rather, it was my Guiding Light. The Guiding Light spoke, and he was cool just like Johnny Depp. So, I gave him an inch, and he appreciated that a great deal.
He led me through the glass doors, and we descended the escalator which connected with the entrance to the underground subway. The subway station exit gate opened for us, and he casually walked through without paying his fare. I followed in stride. We descended the next set of stairs to the train platform. The platform was improbably empty, and I suspected that I had entered his realm.
He jumped onto the subway tracks and looked back waiting for me to bravely follow. I jumped down as well, and we continued walking through the tunnel. We entered the dark subway tunnel just the two of us. He no longer looked back at me, and I was almost walking beside him.
The tunnel got dark. Very dark. Then, there was a light and I assumed it was a subway speeding across the tracks. The Guiding Light kept walking unaffected by the oncoming subway. I trusted this cosmic being now. I accepted death through his stewardship. I was his charge.
The subway never hit me, and the oncoming light turned out to be him sitting across from me once last time at our cosmic games table. He had a final story to show me. It was his own.
CHAPTER 49
Vinculum
The Guiding Light showed me the fruits of my labor. The package of notebooks had arrived at Caltech as planned. The physicist who opened the package read the note and decided to not open the notebooks or engage any further with the unprecedented offering. Instead, she sent the package on to the director of the program. That director did go through my work. In the end, he determined that the ideas were closer to science fiction than real science. My work was filed away in a cabinet to be forgotten.
However, my intuition had been spot-on this time because the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts were geared for alerting their masters of intelligent species that had made leaps forward in Bunt technology. My notes about antimission torus concepts were flagged by the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts, and quickly picked up as an alert by Gamic and Wisp researchers. The researchers found it anomalous that a species who hadn’t yet created true artificial intelligence with self-awareness would then also be able to understand the principles of antimission particles.
The Gamic and Wisp researchers used the Relay Bunts to read the information in my notebooks and they learned about the nefarious schemes of Bill Fey and his Feygit Arada. My information provided the Gamic and Wisp with some shortcuts which allowed them to quickly engineer the Prog Bunts which would provide for mind-control.
The Gamic and Wisp put themselves to task on sending new Prog Bunts into Arada space where they then promptly took over the minds of all Arada, including Bill Fey and Phil Git. The usurper pair were extremely vulnerable to the Prog Bunt technology because their physical bodies were barely part of their identity anymore after physical transition to the wain jars.
The Arada had been stopped dead in their tracks. In some ways, I was to thank for the deed, but most of all it had been the Guiding Light. The Guiding Light had set up his didactic program with me once I had become introspectively conscious. Perhaps, that mental condition is incredibly rare, or otherwise, I was the only one who had come back from the brink and was then capable of acting rationally in the face of inhuman and unreal changes to life. Either way, my introspection allowed me to believe in the unbelievable, and this was the key to stopping the evil Arada.
As mentioned, the last story the Guiding Light showed me in my Will Strange life was his origin story. For the sake of simplicity, I will now call him, “Big G”.
Big G had been a member of the universe’s first highly-advanced species. This species had ruled the universe long before the Gamic were crawling across their thorny briar patches. Big G’s species were advanced but intellectually arrogant, and this character vice restricted their ability to live virtuously.
His species had an interesting skin condition, whereby, the pigment of the skin changed based on the virtue within the mind of that person. Women were ivory-skinned as babies, and men of this species were blue-skinned. However, as they grew and matured, their skin tone could alter based on the thoughts they had and the lives they lived. Both ivory women and blue men slowly turned to an increasingly golden hue of their natural coloring the more their thoughts were good, and their actions kind.
For the most part, the political structures for Big G’s people had been arranged to be dismissive of this quality of goldening skin tone. The quality was denigrated as false virtue, like when guilty people make cow eyes to appear innocent in front of a judge. As such, Big G’s people tended to maintain a status quo whereby not too much gold shone through for anyone in particular. To be very golden was considered immodest and showing off.
Big G was a great person and couldn’t control that. He didn’t want to minimize his true worth for the sake of other people’s insecurities. He became more golden in defiance of the status quo.
Big G’s species were star-faring and they had developed all the same technology as the Gamic or Wisp, and much earlier in the age of the universe. Big G’s species used Relay Bunts to observe other worlds, and they had even engineered the Prog Bunts, although they never used them to control the minds of other lifeforms. Their sense of superiority based in insecurities also dictated that associating with lower species was beneath them and a wasted effort. They had no missionary purpose.
Big G pleaded with his people to use the Prog Bunts for the good of the species advancing around the universe. The Prog Bunts could be used non-invasively to whisper simple messages of goodwill that would encourage and motivate a less advanced species to do better. Big G’s people were more intent on maintaining a status quo based in rejecting exceptionalism and maintaining the base white and blue values.
The more often Big G petitioned for the Prog Bunts to be used to help other species, the more he was resisted by his society. But he goldened. In time, Big G was pure gold and there was no hint of his former blue tinge. He walked among his people shining like a star.
His admirable attitude was intolerable to some. At first, the approach of others had been to downplay Big G’s greatness, and then later, it was about focusing on his flaws as if they were more blaring than those of other people. The next ploy was to deny Big G opportunities he had rightly earned. Finally, his people just treated him like dirt. There was collusion which ensured that Big G would never realize his career projects, and he would be forced to live a miserable life among his petty, small people.
But all that wasn’t quite good enough for the others, and they were not going to let Big G just walk around rubbing their faces in the warm glow of his benevolent golden sheen. So, they set him up. It started with a few false accusations of his impropriety – supposedly, he had been aggressive with his neighbors and scared their children. Then, a bland bleach white women stepped forward to accuse Big G of sexual misconduct. Big G was arraigned. The kangaroo court was farcical at every level of the process. His innocence was staring right back at his accusers, blinding them.
His shameless species continued the witch hunt, and later, he was convicted for assault during an altercation where he was randomly attacked on the street and had merely defended himself. In confinement, the guards and inmates were encouraged to finish what had been started years earlier.
Big G was hung in his cell, and the official story explained that it was suicide. He had been a troubled young man from the start, they said.
I was disgusted to observe the unfairness of Big G’s personal history. The saddest part about it was that his virtue was so obvious and yet denied by all around him simply because it was small-minded and poor personalities that characterized his people. I felt for Big G, but there was nothing I could do to help. It was just a history lesson.
However, the story Big G showed me of his native planet continued. Big G was murdered, but he returned. He resurrected as the Bigot Star. Somehow, in death Big G had entered the cosmic and either been deified by another powerful Force, or he had found himself able to wield Godlike power in the universe independently. Big G presented as the star that his native planet revolved around.
I watched as Big G shined brighter, and brighter… and brighter.
His people were burnt to a crisp in a matter of moments. Big G closed his eyes and shut his mouth. Slowly the features of his face faded, and he was expressed physically as nothing more than a ball of angry burning gas. He had truly become the Bigot Star.
Pulling my head back from the atmosphere of his native world, I recognized that this final show was over.
I understood now that Big G had murdered all his own people and that he felt tremendous guilt about the destructive act. He had lived virtuously, and that had been proof undisputed. However, he had compromised himself with the single act of unbridled violence and righteous vengeance.
There was a sense that Big G knew something that he wasn’t willing to say or show. There were higher mysteries, but you didn’t get to access them if you lost your virtue and compromised your good nature. Perhaps, Big G realized that he could have had his own skeleton crew of cosmic good guys, but that he had squandered it through his genocidal rage. I wondered whether Big G was alone in the cosmic.
I considered that Big G had needed my help against the Arada because he couldn’t bring himself to kill again. However, his lessons were to show me that embracing an avenging spirit wasn’t the way. That was just the Crow’s way – a shortsighted way defined by the statement, “it’s all about me”. That kind of attitude cut you off from the higher mysteries, and perhaps, shut you out from the best parts of what eternal life could provide.
There was much to ask Big G, but I could tell that I wasn’t there to be his conversation partner. Rather, I was there to be his father confessor. And I forgave him. Those white and blue people were assholes.
The candid thought had me laughing in my thoughts. For a moment, I believed that I heard him laugh too, in that uber-cool Johnny Deep slurred drawl manner.
I looked at Big G one last time and he began to shine brighter, and brighter… and brighter.
Vinculum
The Guiding Light showed me the fruits of my labor. The package of notebooks had arrived at Caltech as planned. The physicist who opened the package read the note and decided to not open the notebooks or engage any further with the unprecedented offering. Instead, she sent the package on to the director of the program. That director did go through my work. In the end, he determined that the ideas were closer to science fiction than real science. My work was filed away in a cabinet to be forgotten.
However, my intuition had been spot-on this time because the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts were geared for alerting their masters of intelligent species that had made leaps forward in Bunt technology. My notes about antimission torus concepts were flagged by the Gamic and Wisp Relay Bunts, and quickly picked up as an alert by Gamic and Wisp researchers. The researchers found it anomalous that a species who hadn’t yet created true artificial intelligence with self-awareness would then also be able to understand the principles of antimission particles.
The Gamic and Wisp researchers used the Relay Bunts to read the information in my notebooks and they learned about the nefarious schemes of Bill Fey and his Feygit Arada. My information provided the Gamic and Wisp with some shortcuts which allowed them to quickly engineer the Prog Bunts which would provide for mind-control.
The Gamic and Wisp put themselves to task on sending new Prog Bunts into Arada space where they then promptly took over the minds of all Arada, including Bill Fey and Phil Git. The usurper pair were extremely vulnerable to the Prog Bunt technology because their physical bodies were barely part of their identity anymore after physical transition to the wain jars.
The Arada had been stopped dead in their tracks. In some ways, I was to thank for the deed, but most of all it had been the Guiding Light. The Guiding Light had set up his didactic program with me once I had become introspectively conscious. Perhaps, that mental condition is incredibly rare, or otherwise, I was the only one who had come back from the brink and was then capable of acting rationally in the face of inhuman and unreal changes to life. Either way, my introspection allowed me to believe in the unbelievable, and this was the key to stopping the evil Arada.
As mentioned, the last story the Guiding Light showed me in my Will Strange life was his origin story. For the sake of simplicity, I will now call him, “Big G”.
Big G had been a member of the universe’s first highly-advanced species. This species had ruled the universe long before the Gamic were crawling across their thorny briar patches. Big G’s species were advanced but intellectually arrogant, and this character vice restricted their ability to live virtuously.
His species had an interesting skin condition, whereby, the pigment of the skin changed based on the virtue within the mind of that person. Women were ivory-skinned as babies, and men of this species were blue-skinned. However, as they grew and matured, their skin tone could alter based on the thoughts they had and the lives they lived. Both ivory women and blue men slowly turned to an increasingly golden hue of their natural coloring the more their thoughts were good, and their actions kind.
For the most part, the political structures for Big G’s people had been arranged to be dismissive of this quality of goldening skin tone. The quality was denigrated as false virtue, like when guilty people make cow eyes to appear innocent in front of a judge. As such, Big G’s people tended to maintain a status quo whereby not too much gold shone through for anyone in particular. To be very golden was considered immodest and showing off.
Big G was a great person and couldn’t control that. He didn’t want to minimize his true worth for the sake of other people’s insecurities. He became more golden in defiance of the status quo.
Big G’s species were star-faring and they had developed all the same technology as the Gamic or Wisp, and much earlier in the age of the universe. Big G’s species used Relay Bunts to observe other worlds, and they had even engineered the Prog Bunts, although they never used them to control the minds of other lifeforms. Their sense of superiority based in insecurities also dictated that associating with lower species was beneath them and a wasted effort. They had no missionary purpose.
Big G pleaded with his people to use the Prog Bunts for the good of the species advancing around the universe. The Prog Bunts could be used non-invasively to whisper simple messages of goodwill that would encourage and motivate a less advanced species to do better. Big G’s people were more intent on maintaining a status quo based in rejecting exceptionalism and maintaining the base white and blue values.
The more often Big G petitioned for the Prog Bunts to be used to help other species, the more he was resisted by his society. But he goldened. In time, Big G was pure gold and there was no hint of his former blue tinge. He walked among his people shining like a star.
His admirable attitude was intolerable to some. At first, the approach of others had been to downplay Big G’s greatness, and then later, it was about focusing on his flaws as if they were more blaring than those of other people. The next ploy was to deny Big G opportunities he had rightly earned. Finally, his people just treated him like dirt. There was collusion which ensured that Big G would never realize his career projects, and he would be forced to live a miserable life among his petty, small people.
But all that wasn’t quite good enough for the others, and they were not going to let Big G just walk around rubbing their faces in the warm glow of his benevolent golden sheen. So, they set him up. It started with a few false accusations of his impropriety – supposedly, he had been aggressive with his neighbors and scared their children. Then, a bland bleach white women stepped forward to accuse Big G of sexual misconduct. Big G was arraigned. The kangaroo court was farcical at every level of the process. His innocence was staring right back at his accusers, blinding them.
His shameless species continued the witch hunt, and later, he was convicted for assault during an altercation where he was randomly attacked on the street and had merely defended himself. In confinement, the guards and inmates were encouraged to finish what had been started years earlier.
Big G was hung in his cell, and the official story explained that it was suicide. He had been a troubled young man from the start, they said.
I was disgusted to observe the unfairness of Big G’s personal history. The saddest part about it was that his virtue was so obvious and yet denied by all around him simply because it was small-minded and poor personalities that characterized his people. I felt for Big G, but there was nothing I could do to help. It was just a history lesson.
However, the story Big G showed me of his native planet continued. Big G was murdered, but he returned. He resurrected as the Bigot Star. Somehow, in death Big G had entered the cosmic and either been deified by another powerful Force, or he had found himself able to wield Godlike power in the universe independently. Big G presented as the star that his native planet revolved around.
I watched as Big G shined brighter, and brighter… and brighter.
His people were burnt to a crisp in a matter of moments. Big G closed his eyes and shut his mouth. Slowly the features of his face faded, and he was expressed physically as nothing more than a ball of angry burning gas. He had truly become the Bigot Star.
Pulling my head back from the atmosphere of his native world, I recognized that this final show was over.
I understood now that Big G had murdered all his own people and that he felt tremendous guilt about the destructive act. He had lived virtuously, and that had been proof undisputed. However, he had compromised himself with the single act of unbridled violence and righteous vengeance.
There was a sense that Big G knew something that he wasn’t willing to say or show. There were higher mysteries, but you didn’t get to access them if you lost your virtue and compromised your good nature. Perhaps, Big G realized that he could have had his own skeleton crew of cosmic good guys, but that he had squandered it through his genocidal rage. I wondered whether Big G was alone in the cosmic.
I considered that Big G had needed my help against the Arada because he couldn’t bring himself to kill again. However, his lessons were to show me that embracing an avenging spirit wasn’t the way. That was just the Crow’s way – a shortsighted way defined by the statement, “it’s all about me”. That kind of attitude cut you off from the higher mysteries, and perhaps, shut you out from the best parts of what eternal life could provide.
There was much to ask Big G, but I could tell that I wasn’t there to be his conversation partner. Rather, I was there to be his father confessor. And I forgave him. Those white and blue people were assholes.
The candid thought had me laughing in my thoughts. For a moment, I believed that I heard him laugh too, in that uber-cool Johnny Deep slurred drawl manner.
I looked at Big G one last time and he began to shine brighter, and brighter… and brighter.
CHAPTER 50
Fulcrum
The blinding light didn’t burn me. I was not like those reckless, unfair white and blue people of Big G’s native world. But I did close my eyes as it got brighter.
My eyes adjusted to the brightness even from behind the protection of my eyelids. It was safe to open my eyes again. I looked around and recognized that I was in a hospital bed. The walls were white, and it was a hospital room. The towels were blue, and I was certainly in a hospital. Things were clean. I looked to the side and my father was asleep on a chair. My mother walked in with a cup of coffee. She noticed that I was awake and immediately dropped the coffee from shock. My father awoke.
My mom ran over to me to hold me. My father instinctively cleaned up the mess, and then he too attended to me.
I was very confused, and they assured me that this made perfect sense when considering everything that had happened. I wanted to know what I should be considering. What had happened?
It was explained to me that I had been found at my campsite in Algonquin Park, nearly starved to death on September 30th, 2005. By sheer luck, a hiker had spotted me and alerted the rangers. I was flown out of the park across the lake by an EMS seaplane.
I was in a coma and transferred from the hospital in Huntsville back to Toronto General once my condition was stable.
It had been twenty weeks that I was in the coma. No one was blaming me for anything. People were happy that I had survived. I didn’t need to explain myself. But I had to promise my mom that I wouldn’t do it again.
Getting home to my parent’s place felt nice, and I didn’t go back to my apartment but instead slept in the basement which had been my bedroom during my high school years. Some friends visited me, including Gary and Alex. It was difficult to look Alex in the eye, but by the end of their stay we were laughing and reflecting on the good old days.
Heath didn’t visit, and he was going through his own personal Hell. I was in no position to help him in that moment.
Later, I thought about whether it was worth verifying if the Caltech physicists had received my notes. Did any of it actually happen? The psychiatrist at the hospital that was assigned to my case believed that my cosmic journey had been a dreamlike experience while I was in the coma. I was assured that such vivid delusions were not uncommon under the circumstances. I think the psychiatrist’s reassurances were focused on helping me to move on.
I wondered about the Crusader Cabal. Were the Arada still interfering with the world? Was Earth surveyed by alien artificial intelligence – Bunts? Did that really happen?
It was unclear if Algonquin Park had been the last “real” event in my conscious life. I was afraid to investigate. I wanted to give myself a chance to make the discovery more naturally, and only when the time was right.
Several months passed. I went back to school and found a field of study that interested me – anthropology. Maverick film director, Orson Welles, had once made a pithy remark that for modern man philosophy was at an end, but anthropology was just beginning. I hoped that it wasn’t too late to rebuild my shattered life.
Almost a year after waking in the hospital, I had yet to be directed to even a single little cosmic clue about the reality of my ordeal. The universe was not showing me anything. I felt alright about it though.
One night, I was over at my parent’s place doing the dinner-and-a-movie ritual. We were watching the classic comedy, Twins, starring one of my all-time favorites – the hero, Arnie. The movie ended and I hugged my mom goodnight. My father was already asleep on the couch.
I stepped outside and took in the fresh air.
Slowly, I made my way down the steps and across the front lawn. A car with one headlight burnt out was driving down the street toward me. I raised my hand and guarded my eyes from the light. The car passed and it was Weird Willard driving. It was early for him to be putting around. For that matter, it was late for him to still be alive. The old man made a left turn at my street and headed west. He wasn’t on his way home, it seemed.
I was curious about the encounter, and it felt like a good time to ask a big question and then look for that important little clue I had been waiting for patiently. However, I was hoping there would be no strange choices to make.
At a leisurely pace, I headed north walking past the row of houses that led to Weird Willard’s house. When I arrived, his car was still gone. The lights were off in the house. Not much had changed from the last time I had been prowling around his property. The weeds were taller.
I worked my way around to the side of the house and checked the backdoor. The backdoor looked as penetrable as ever. As I moved forward, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to investigate the Arnold residence for a second time.
The backdoor opened with ease, and I stepped through the doorway. The only thing different about the kitchen this time was that there was a carton of orange juice sitting on the counter beside a stack of old newspapers.
I pressed on. The door to the basement was ajar and I opened it, and then I tentatively descended the steps.
At the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that the bathroom door was closed this time. Walking through to the main room brought on some hesitation. I stopped and felt the space around me. This space had no answers. It was quiet… and dark… and dusty. I should have left.
Instead, I moved toward the door to the furnace room. Slowly, I reached for the doorknob and then I gently pushed the door forward and took one step into the far room of E.T. Arnold’s basement.
It was impossible to describe the feeling – something between tugging numbness and crushing horror. I was once again looking into the stygian gulf and dark void of an impossibly large, black space. I had no thoughts. The shock was coursing through me. My body throbbed and then tightened.
And then, the thoughts rushed in. I remembered everything – all the experiences were jostling at the forefront of my mind, tumbling, and spilling over each other demanding my strictest attention.
Why had I come back? What could I gain from it?
The truth. It was the quest for truth that had compelled me toward everything in my mental journey. Everything I had seen, and everything I had known was about learning something of objective reality – a truth. A single truth.
And now, I had to know what the big idea was. What was the single truth in the grander scheme of what had happened to me? Yet, in those petrified moments standing starkly misplaced, what stared back at me was sheer nothingness. Was this the answer to the big idea? Was I nothing in the grander scheme of existence? Was what happened to me insignificant, cosmically?
Was there no single truth for me to know for sure?
And if I walked away from the black void – if I turned my back on the reality of nothing – then did I deserve to ever know the truth about something? About anything?
Even if ignorance was truly blissful, I knew too much. Too much of myself. Too much of what could be true, and what might be true. I knew something. Still, I knew nothing of what was true for certain, and that reality haunted me. It defined my status as alone. I was alone, and that was the closest I would get in my life to a single truth.
There was no sound of shuffling behind me, and so I dared to turn around.
THE END
Fulcrum
The blinding light didn’t burn me. I was not like those reckless, unfair white and blue people of Big G’s native world. But I did close my eyes as it got brighter.
My eyes adjusted to the brightness even from behind the protection of my eyelids. It was safe to open my eyes again. I looked around and recognized that I was in a hospital bed. The walls were white, and it was a hospital room. The towels were blue, and I was certainly in a hospital. Things were clean. I looked to the side and my father was asleep on a chair. My mother walked in with a cup of coffee. She noticed that I was awake and immediately dropped the coffee from shock. My father awoke.
My mom ran over to me to hold me. My father instinctively cleaned up the mess, and then he too attended to me.
I was very confused, and they assured me that this made perfect sense when considering everything that had happened. I wanted to know what I should be considering. What had happened?
It was explained to me that I had been found at my campsite in Algonquin Park, nearly starved to death on September 30th, 2005. By sheer luck, a hiker had spotted me and alerted the rangers. I was flown out of the park across the lake by an EMS seaplane.
I was in a coma and transferred from the hospital in Huntsville back to Toronto General once my condition was stable.
It had been twenty weeks that I was in the coma. No one was blaming me for anything. People were happy that I had survived. I didn’t need to explain myself. But I had to promise my mom that I wouldn’t do it again.
Getting home to my parent’s place felt nice, and I didn’t go back to my apartment but instead slept in the basement which had been my bedroom during my high school years. Some friends visited me, including Gary and Alex. It was difficult to look Alex in the eye, but by the end of their stay we were laughing and reflecting on the good old days.
Heath didn’t visit, and he was going through his own personal Hell. I was in no position to help him in that moment.
Later, I thought about whether it was worth verifying if the Caltech physicists had received my notes. Did any of it actually happen? The psychiatrist at the hospital that was assigned to my case believed that my cosmic journey had been a dreamlike experience while I was in the coma. I was assured that such vivid delusions were not uncommon under the circumstances. I think the psychiatrist’s reassurances were focused on helping me to move on.
I wondered about the Crusader Cabal. Were the Arada still interfering with the world? Was Earth surveyed by alien artificial intelligence – Bunts? Did that really happen?
It was unclear if Algonquin Park had been the last “real” event in my conscious life. I was afraid to investigate. I wanted to give myself a chance to make the discovery more naturally, and only when the time was right.
Several months passed. I went back to school and found a field of study that interested me – anthropology. Maverick film director, Orson Welles, had once made a pithy remark that for modern man philosophy was at an end, but anthropology was just beginning. I hoped that it wasn’t too late to rebuild my shattered life.
Almost a year after waking in the hospital, I had yet to be directed to even a single little cosmic clue about the reality of my ordeal. The universe was not showing me anything. I felt alright about it though.
One night, I was over at my parent’s place doing the dinner-and-a-movie ritual. We were watching the classic comedy, Twins, starring one of my all-time favorites – the hero, Arnie. The movie ended and I hugged my mom goodnight. My father was already asleep on the couch.
I stepped outside and took in the fresh air.
Slowly, I made my way down the steps and across the front lawn. A car with one headlight burnt out was driving down the street toward me. I raised my hand and guarded my eyes from the light. The car passed and it was Weird Willard driving. It was early for him to be putting around. For that matter, it was late for him to still be alive. The old man made a left turn at my street and headed west. He wasn’t on his way home, it seemed.
I was curious about the encounter, and it felt like a good time to ask a big question and then look for that important little clue I had been waiting for patiently. However, I was hoping there would be no strange choices to make.
At a leisurely pace, I headed north walking past the row of houses that led to Weird Willard’s house. When I arrived, his car was still gone. The lights were off in the house. Not much had changed from the last time I had been prowling around his property. The weeds were taller.
I worked my way around to the side of the house and checked the backdoor. The backdoor looked as penetrable as ever. As I moved forward, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to investigate the Arnold residence for a second time.
The backdoor opened with ease, and I stepped through the doorway. The only thing different about the kitchen this time was that there was a carton of orange juice sitting on the counter beside a stack of old newspapers.
I pressed on. The door to the basement was ajar and I opened it, and then I tentatively descended the steps.
At the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that the bathroom door was closed this time. Walking through to the main room brought on some hesitation. I stopped and felt the space around me. This space had no answers. It was quiet… and dark… and dusty. I should have left.
Instead, I moved toward the door to the furnace room. Slowly, I reached for the doorknob and then I gently pushed the door forward and took one step into the far room of E.T. Arnold’s basement.
It was impossible to describe the feeling – something between tugging numbness and crushing horror. I was once again looking into the stygian gulf and dark void of an impossibly large, black space. I had no thoughts. The shock was coursing through me. My body throbbed and then tightened.
And then, the thoughts rushed in. I remembered everything – all the experiences were jostling at the forefront of my mind, tumbling, and spilling over each other demanding my strictest attention.
Why had I come back? What could I gain from it?
The truth. It was the quest for truth that had compelled me toward everything in my mental journey. Everything I had seen, and everything I had known was about learning something of objective reality – a truth. A single truth.
And now, I had to know what the big idea was. What was the single truth in the grander scheme of what had happened to me? Yet, in those petrified moments standing starkly misplaced, what stared back at me was sheer nothingness. Was this the answer to the big idea? Was I nothing in the grander scheme of existence? Was what happened to me insignificant, cosmically?
Was there no single truth for me to know for sure?
And if I walked away from the black void – if I turned my back on the reality of nothing – then did I deserve to ever know the truth about something? About anything?
Even if ignorance was truly blissful, I knew too much. Too much of myself. Too much of what could be true, and what might be true. I knew something. Still, I knew nothing of what was true for certain, and that reality haunted me. It defined my status as alone. I was alone, and that was the closest I would get in my life to a single truth.
There was no sound of shuffling behind me, and so I dared to turn around.
THE END