Nonentity Page 9

  “It’s a necessary risk.”

  “You’re hopeless then. Think of those who care about you. What about your friends? What about your father? What about …”

  “What about you?” she said, placing her hands on my face. “How will you handle it if something awful happens to me?”

  “Well, uh, that’s a good question. I definitely appreciate you too much to let it happen without trying to talk some sense into you.”

  “But it goes beyond mere appreciation, doesn’t it?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Pulling me in closer, Lorna said, “Let’s drop the pretense. Stop acting like a character in some book, dramatically avoiding the obvious. This moment might be the last one we ever share in this realm. Make this movie real while you still can.”

  “Uh, what do you want me to say?”

  “That you’re in love with me. You’ve been in love with me since the beginning. That is good and noble and beautiful. I can’t express how grateful I am to possess a love as strong as yours. Yet, that love is not for this place and time. It belongs to something elsewhere.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? This is …”

  She stopped me in mid-sentence with a kiss that warmed the chill in my veins. All discontent flowed out of me. The kiss lasted several minutes.

  When it ended, she stepped back from me. She looked me squarely in the eyes. “I love you too, Sebastian. This is not a goodbye. Consider it a ‘to be continued.’”

  Then she was gone.

  Nine days later I learned that Lorna would face evaporation. I could not contact her. First came shock. Then anguish, protracted and draining. Those sensations ripened into bitterness, thrusting me onto a perilous path.

  Death to the Permanent Regime! I had finally chosen my own reality.

  CHAPTER 6

  CATASTROPHE AVOIDANCE THROUGH

  PARALLEL UNIVERSALISM

  On the third anniversary of Lorna’s evaporation, another spell dislodged me:

  I saw a blue blotch. Gregorian psychedelia rose to a clamor. Flames exploded through a door in a night sky. Through that door I fell.

  I landed in a field stretching beyond sight. The sun above ceded to absolute dark. Thunder and lightning thrashed. Copious rain pelted me. The downfall was cleansing. I closed my eyes and felt release.

  Opening my eyes, I spotted an immense, glowing bubble floating out of the vast black toward me. A blurry figure stood inside the bubble. The orb neared, revealing its occupant: Lorna. Her white gown seemed afire. The bubble halted a few feet in front of me. Lorna raised her arms skyward – extinguishing the rain, thunder, and lightning.

  Within her sphere she stared at me, swirling green eyes hypnotic. “Sebastian, why are you here?”

  I was too dumbfounded to respond.

  “What is this,” she said, “a dream, a delusion, a glimpse into another world?”

  “I, uh, haven’t a clue.”

  She laughed. “Naturally. You’ve transcended the material universe.”

  “That’s unbelievable. Am I losing my mind?”

  “You’re losing your restricted mind for one without boundaries. Search beneath the illusory surface to discover what the new mind can fathom.”

  “The illusory surface is all that there is,” I said.

  “In your world, yes, but perception is exclusively king where I linger. The will alone determines truth and falsehood. This experience is real or unreal according to what you desire. What is your wish?”

  “I want it be real, but it can’t be; you are dead.”

  Lorna said, “I have completed the life cycle in a literal sense, yet I no longer operate within literal ramifications. Care to join me beyond those ramifications?”

  “Perhaps you might offer me some assistance.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Can I touch you? Physical contact might erase the boundaries.”

  “Not yet,” she said, gently waving a hand. “The restricted mind still blocks you from advancing to my realm. Do not despair. I know someone who can bridge the gap.”

  “Who?”

  “You met him once already. You dismissed him as ‘a bunko artist completely enthralled with his own pseudo-science.’ Return to him with a more open mind.”

  “Oh no. You mean Lukas Lambert, don’t you? Damn. It was bad enough that you were so taken with him while you were alive.”

  She raised her arms to the sky. Thunder and lightning erupted. Heavy rain resumed, splashing upon me more violently than before.

  “What the hell is this?” I said. “Can you dictate the weather?”

  “I can dictate anything that strikes my fancy. I can vanish if I prefer.”

  “Please stay.”

  “Go to Lukas, Sebastian. He is expecting you.”

  Fierce winds blew. A punishing hailstorm broke out. Lorna’s bubble dimmed. She faded into nothingness.

  I screamed, “I’ll do what you ask. I will return to the parallel universalist.”

  Too late. The bubble was gone. Lorna was dead again. The blue blotch recaptured my vision, casting me out of this latest hallucination:

  I awoke in a chair in my dreary apartment. Deflated, it took me a few seconds to notice that I was soaking wet. Had my hallucination ended? Nothing aside from my drenched state was askew. My barely functional television sat across from me. The walls remained an uninspiring beige. The carpet sported its usual stains. My chair still had a hole in one of its arms. I was ensconced in dreadful realism. But I dripped from head to toe.

  A knock came to my front door. Answering it, I was astonished to see the short, nameless driver of the unregistered cab in which Lorna and I had twice traveled together.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Mr. Flemming,” said the cabbie, “you have an appointment. We must go immediately.”

  “Wait a minute. What are you talking about? I haven’t set anything up.”

  “This was prearranged.”

  “Prearranged? By whom?”

  The man glared at me. “That’s not important. I am to take you to Mr. Lukas Lambert. Please get ready.”

  I capitulated. The unexpected visitor was perhaps a sequel to my hallucination in the rain. I threw on some wrinkled clothes and departed.

  We arrived at Lukas’s barn/workplace to find the premises more horrid than before. There were large holes in the structure’s roof. Cracks ran all along the walls. Piles of trash littered the front yard. In place of the half-burned mailbox was a sawed-off post.

  I exited the vehicle and traversed the stone walkway leading to the doorknob-less door. Gigantic chunks of concrete were missing from the path. I knocked on the door.

  “Ah hell,” called Lukas from inside. “Stop pestering me. I am not home.”

  I said, “It sounds like your voice is home.”

  “Do not trust your ears. In fact, this is only a recording. This is only a recording. Please evacuate. I repeat: This is only a recording. This is …”

  “As convincing as that is, I’ll call your bluff anyway. Not for me, mind you. I’m doing this for Lorna.”

  “Lorna? Oh goodness. You’re breaking my heart. How I miss her smile and gracious aura. A terrible thing that happened to that girl. Terrible thing.”

  I said, “I couldn’t agree more, sir. That’s why I’m here. She appeared to me in a whacked-out vision and urged me to see you again.”

  “A vision, eh? Funny you should mention that. She appeared to me as well. I must have forgotten. Thanks for jogging my memory. Sebastian, right?”

  “Yes. Will you please open the door?”

  “Uh, sure. My manners remain deficient. Allow me to compensate.”

  Lukas opened the door. Much of his hair stood on end as if electrocuted, but his bangs were long, limp, and bleached. Cracked lenses obscured the dazed blue eyes behind his bent glasses. His necktie was neon pink and nearly frayed out of existence. He fashioned two shirts – one gray, the oth
er red – awkwardly patched together. A three-inch hole by the crotch maximized the hideousness of his pea green pants. I looked away.

  Putting a hand on my shoulder, Lukas said, “You consider me a circus act.”

  “Oh no. Of course not,” I said.

  “Don’t bullshit me, Sebastian. No sense pretending you don’t view me as a member of the freak show.”

  “You just have a unique style, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that. The clothes do not necessarily make the man.”

  “Damn that’s good! Preoccupation with dress clouds judgment. That’s what really makes the man: judgment.”

  I said, “Judgment also makes the woman. Lorna, in this case.”

  “Yes. She gets around a lot for a dead person. She wants me to conduct another session with you. Are you ready?”

  “I guess.”

  “You should never guess unless you fully understand the question,” Lukas said.

  “Well, there’s a lot I don’t understand. Like my vision of Lorna. Perhaps you can enlighten me about it. You see, I …”

  “Say no more. It was raining, she appeared, you conversed with her, the vision ended, and you were soaking wet after it was over. You’d like to know if it really happened.”

  I nodded, amazed by his knowledge.

  He said, “I can’t answer that. Do you wish that it happened?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Then voila – it happened. Congratulations.”

  “Just like that? I’m sorry, but that’s flimsy.”

  He threw up his hands. “Okay. Then it didn’t happen. Satisfied?”

  “No. Shit. I’m trying to get a handle on this. I don’t know how it could have been more than a fantasy. The one factor that lends it truth is how drenched I was afterwards.”

  “Then focus on that factor and ignore all else. I had my vision of her as well. I never doubted its truth. Fantasies don’t bring people like you and me together.”

  “Fair enough. Shall we get on with this?”

  Lukas led me down the foyer to the door of his office. The door still had the personalized nameplate (Lukas Lambert, Parallel Universalist), along with the hourglass featuring a blue circle on its bottom half.

  We entered his office. I was stunned. Everything was in neat shape. All the junk that once cluttered the room was gone. There were no scattered papers, moth-infested clothing, and half-eaten plates of food. The desk, two chairs, and file cabinet remained. The place smelled of roses, a happy substitute for the dead animal odor I remembered.

  “What the hell happened in here?” I said.

  “Oh yeah. I made some changes.”

  “No kidding. This is hardly the same room. What did you do with all that stuff?”

  “I threw it out,” he said. “I tried to convince myself that some undiscovered jewel was hiding in all that garbage, you know, the ultimate formula that encapsulates everything. Hogwash. All that trash was an impediment to intellectual refinement.”

  “Well, it’s a hell of an improvement.”

  “Thanks. Please have a seat in the chair in front of the desk.”

  I did so. Lukas went to the file cabinet, opened the top drawer, and retrieved his prized red headpiece. He grabbed the chair behind the desk and rolled it to a position facing me. He dimmed the room’s lights with a remote and sat down a couple feet across from me.

  “Remember this nifty gadget?” he said, waving the headpiece before my eyes.

  “The SRF-3.”

  “Your powers of recall are substantial, my friend. Then again, how could anybody forget such a stupendous device?”

  He activated the sound system in the room. That haunting mixture of Gregorian chant and psychedelia pierced my ears. Lukas slipped the SRF-3 over his head. The skinny red lenses of the headpiece rotated, unleashing tiny blue laser beams that overwhelmed my sight. I sensed a gigantic flame bursting toward me and singeing my skin.

  “Get me away from here! I don’t want to be burned,” I yelled. As before, the words I spoke were beyond my control (which would persist throughout the session).

  Lukas’s voice commanded composure: “The fire cannot harm you.”

  I fell into a trance of blue. Peace overcame me. I felt safe, unassuming, open to new experience, free. The blue blotch melted and a door in a night sky became visible.

  With a disorienting echo effect Lukas said, “Sebastian, what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said robotically.

  “Have you been waiting for me?”

  “I don’t believe so. I have anticipated traveling to another place.”

  “You are in that place now, correct? It is uncharted.”

  “That’s not right,” said I, my words incomprehensible. “I have been here before, possibly in another state of consciousness.”

  “Or maybe in the unconscious or the subconscious. Maybe it isn’t a place you’ve been so much as a leap forward or backward in time. Might you have gone off the clock? Could the future be present, the past yet to occur?”

  “Huh? What?”

  “Sebastian, are you falling?”

  His question sent me tumbling downward. I thudded onto the floor inside an elevator. The elevator doors shut. Blueness absorbed my sight. I felt myself getting sucked violently through a wind tunnel.

  “These upheavals notwithstanding, you are fine, Sebastian. You’re being pulled into a future paradoxically behind you. Do not resist the scrambling of time.”

  “I, uh, I may get sick.”

  “Then embrace the leap forward, which is actually backward.”

  I said, “Where am I?”

  “Not where – when.”

  “Okay. When am I?”

  “Not when – if.”

  “Damn it, Lukas. This is confusing.”

  With a muffled laugh he said, “Elevator going up!”

  My vision’s blueness dissolved. I remained in the elevator, which shot upwards at frightening speed. Eyeing the floor listing within the lift, I read the top level’s designation: INFINITY IN REVERSE. The blue blotch recaptured my sight.

  “You are not yet ready for the highest floor,” said Lukas.

  “But am I ready for a leap forward or backward in time? How are such leaps possible?”

  “I have no use for the possible. You won’t either eventually. Only the impossible can enable you to go back and bypass the suffering associated with your mother.”

  “How do you know about my mother?”

  “I survey your entire life from where I sit. Your pain is vast, but it does not aid you. You must let go.”

  “I don’t know how to do that,” I said.

  “You must face what genuinely haunts you. Who or what is your enemy?”

  “My enemy?”

  “Yes, your enemy,” Lukas said. “What threatens you the most?”

  “I suppose the Permanent Regime. Like anyone who dares to be his own person, I am vulnerable to totalitarians. The Regime will likely destroy me.”

  “Except that you will have already destroyed yourself.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said I.

  “You are not your own person. You’re a facsimile of someone who once was. You’re a shadow. The Permanent Regime is not your enemy. There is no Permanent Regime and never was. It’s a cheap illusion.”

  “Horseshit! Do you deny the tyranny that rules us? Do you declare it unreal?”

  “Yes. At the risk of revealing too much: the Regime is no more than a plot device. Set it aside. You have sold yourself short, purchasing a room in a house of sand. It was your attempt to escape.”

  “Escape what?”

  “Your own grief. Self-loathing. That feeling of not doing enough. You are lost, Sebastian.”

  “How so?”

  “Sometimes it is easier to fall for terrifying illusions than to properly forgive oneself.”

  “What does that mean? Please elaborate, preferably in language I understand.”

  Lukas l
owered to a whisper. “I have said too much. Everything I have indicated will actualize at the appropriate juncture. Patience, my friend.”

  “To hell with that. I demand a better explanation.”

  “Forget it. I have a request unrelated to what we’ve been discussing.”

  “What is it?”

  “I asked you to do this the last time you were here. You were not receptive to it then. I hope your attitude is different now.”

  “We’ll see. What do you want?”

  “Clear your thoughts. Concentrate all your energy,” he said. “Locate Lorna within this room, using a finger to point her out. Can you do that?”

  “No chance. She is dead.”

  “She wasn’t dead in that vision you had. She was unambiguously alive when she appeared to me. Do not allow the illusion of death to blind you. Reach beyond the artificial limits of your perception. Find Lorna, Sebastian.”

  I sidestepped my reservations and focused all my meditative strength toward pinpointing Lorna. Her face flashed but only as a memory. I became discombobulated.

  Lukas said, “You are spinning out of your momentum. Slow down and regain command. Use your love to pull her into the light.”

  “I can’t, man. I, uh, I just don’t have the ability. I’m sorry. I did my best.”

  The music stopped. The blue blotch faded and my normal vision resumed. I looked around and spotted Lukas placing his SRF-3 back into the file cabinet.

  “That was interesting,” I said. “What should I make of it? I’m disappointed I couldn’t do what you asked there at the end.”

  He walked over to me, patting me on the shoulder. “Don’t get down on yourself. The timing of my request was poor. Sometimes I rush things a bit. I apologize.”

  “It’s okay. That was a lot more revealing than my first session. We were getting somewhere this time. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “Oh, we got somewhere alright. It wasn’t where we needed to be.”

  “I want a stronger grasp of all this. Please share your insight.”

  “Let it go, Sebastian. Trying to put the pieces together will scramble your mind more than it already is. Only an unscrambled mind can successfully scramble time.”

  I recalled a comment by Lorna’s father, Randolph Doppelganger. “You know, somebody once told me that the scrambled mind is often superior to the mind that is clear. The clear mind becomes fixed and is too perfect to improve. The scrambled mind strengthens itself as it puts things together.”