by K.Z. Freeman
There is a certain group of people you will come across in your life towards whom you'll feel an immediate thread of possibility, connecting you. You'll almost never realize what it is that has caught your "eye", because most of the time, it's never a superficial thing. You'll rarely recognize what the feeling is, but you will always feel it. This event of interconnectivity may happen by chance encounters with strangers, associates of friends, relatives, etc. Sometimes it's their visual appearance which sets the net of possibility in motion, sometimes it is their personality, sometimes you cannot pinpoint what it is. In most cases, your immediate, gut reaction upon seeing these fields of vibration will usually consist of you not wishing to have anything to do with the person in question, at least not initially. But like a slumping glacier, you'll be powerless to stop the motion of events, for the interwoven paths have already been set by the mere presence or sight of them, or by the mere idea of them. You do not feel a possibility that might be, but a possibility that will be, one which has already been laid out, preset. It is up to you to decide how the events within this constellation of chance will play out. But play out they will, in all the universes, in all times, over and over, through lifetimes and through infinite paths. They will play out because they are the possibilities which you need to tread. Minds do not shape themselves, they are shaped by other minds. And the mind knows this, it searches for this. It craves this. It is elevated by this and brought high by this. It is like this with Calyx and me. At least in my mind. She is the possibility that sends my mind on edge. Ty is another such individual, and as they walk beside me, we are all struck by what we see. The house behind us has disappeared. Instead, there is a tunnel leading underground, the town around us has disappeared, instead there is only the egg, The Fane.
“A hologram?” Calyx asks. She seems to know a lot of words I’ve never heard before.
“What?” I ask.
“A projection. Now I see.”
“See what?” Ty stands equally baffled.
“That egg must be a generator, a holographic projector that creates three dimensional images around us. Amazing. I’ve only read about such technology in the old books my father had hidden in our cave.”
“But,” Ty objects, “the doctor. He was real, I felt his touch.”
“Aye,” I add. “I too felt him.”
“And the liquor, the fists flung my way. All of it,” says Ty. “Those were no images.”
“Holographic imagery has come far in the pre-War world,” Calyx tells us. “Our ancestors played with matter and energy, with light, found how these things are one. They were masters.”
“If they had truly been masters, as you say,” I tell her, “then they wouldn’t have turned the world into this.”
This silences them both for a while and we stand. We just stand.
“What did we see? Was it how this all began?” Ty asks.
“It would appear so, aye,” I nod.
I try to focus on her words as Calyx speaks again, but all I can focus on are what she had said earlier. They’ve found how things are one. For it was also on my mind. The Wasteland is vast, it stretches, presumably, over the entire world. And when a man wanders such a dull landscape, he must create his own landscapes in his mind. Landscapes crafted out of movement and motion. Landscapes of thought. Strange things come into my mind then, in the dark, between days. I have since discovered that emotion is energy in movement. It mirrors life. We shift and the spaces between the lines move, yet it's not only the spaces in between which determine an area. For there exists a reality consisting of fragments and intangible "things" around and within, which drift onto forever. These are thoughts taking form in the mind - they start and begin in the mind and end in the mind, only ever one at a time, singular. The eyes see, but only what's "out there", what can be determined and captured, processed, while emotions feel what the eyes cannot. And always the sphere of emotion warps and wefts, sets and determines a different mould of reality outside reason and flesh, ever-adding to the complexity of its infinite design. And that design has brought me here, of all places. Here, looking into her eyes. When she catches mine, she smiles.
“Nomad?” she asks. “Were you listening?”
“I think he may have drifted off there,” says Ty and snaps his fingers in front of my nose. “Hey, merde.”
“You were saying we need to get to back to tTe Fane, see if there’s something we can find there.”
“We have no choice,” I tell her. “If we do this, we must go look for him in the fortress.”
“The further south I go, the more things get complicated,” says Ty. “Have you two noticed this? Lately it’s never just steal this, steal that, kill him, kill her. Where I came from I don’t think anyone even heard of a holo before.”
“Hologram,” corrects Calyx.
“Ayuh, that,” he nods.
“Too much for you, Ty?” I smile at him.
“Nah. I like the change of pace.”
“Good, now I don’t suppose you two would be up for some rest before we go?”
Our escapade inside the mind or hologram the old man had projected drained me. I feel as though I had shattered into an infinite amount of pieces and was put together again. Badly. Whoever did it had forgotten something essential.
“I need rest,” I admit.
Ty doesn’t even answer, he just sits down near one of the statues and smiles. The Fane seems to be the only real thing in town – along with all the statues within in. All are miraculously well preserved. Whoever had seen or come across them must have known the place to be too precious and left them all the way they were. Ty drifts into a fetal position, resting on his elbow. His words mirror my thoughts, “Something didn’t put me back right.”
I sit down with Calyx, her tired eyes locked with me.
“Can you tell me something?” I ask her.
“Of course,” she smiles.
We had all tried to put what we saw behind us. We had talked little of it, but I could feel it fluttering on the edge of all out thoughts. Ty must have fallen asleep already. He says nothing.
“Do you know anything about how they discovered all things are one? Energy and matter.”
“I wish I knew,” she says. “But I recall the first paragraph of a book I once read. It caught my attention. The book tried to explain how a certain process works. But the introduction is just a prelude to the type of thinking necessary to understand the equations. I didn’t understand any but the foreword had stuck in my head. It read: Reality-thinking, abstract thinking, and that empty category, the unconscious continuum, are all of a piece. You cannot have one without the other. Each implies the other; none are the other; none can be except by or in the other. The process of reality is an interaction between the three. They are not discontinuous. They merge slowly and imperceptibly into each other.”
I didn’t understand all of it, but I understood enough, I think. “Do you think minds are one as well?” I ask.
She looks at me. She says nothing for a while. I can see her eyes examining my face and I wish I knew what she saw there. At length, she says, “Do you feel like they are?”
My thoughts sound strange to me. “Perhaps.” I wished to say something else, but don’t. Her eyes never leave mine. I feel her warm breath as she speaks.
“Will you stay close to me tonight?”
“Are you trying to protect me from something?” I ask.
“Bad dreams,” she smiles.
“Do you think you can?”
“I don’t know. Can I?”
“You can try,” I smile back.
She huddles up next to me, holds my arm in hers and tightly to her chest. I feel the beat of her, the reality of her. It seems she had finally stepped out of my dreams and into place more tangible. I drift, listen to her breathing and remember the first time I saw her face. It was as though I had been reborn. Like all my paths had been leading me to that moment. I saw her and knew I could love her. My mind slips away from me and I fall into a state
of forgetfulness.
In my dream, I float. Above the sky, above the world. The sight is familiar to me, but where the image had come from I cannot tell, nor do I care. I stare. Darkness and the light of innumerable stars surround me. Stars fill the firmament, some faint, but most clear and pulsing. I cannot move, I just… drift. Yet to move is my desire. To get out of here, to be free. But my will is weak, abstract to the point where I begin to wonder if it’s even my own. Are my desires real, or projections? Do I see, or do I feel? Answers elude me and I float on…
I spot movement to my left, something beautiful and free, the way I wish to be. I desire to look upon it and, for a time, my wish is granted. The white birds flies by me, flutters, impossibly elegant, then impossibly quiet again. It passes in slow motion, so that I can see every bit of it, every hidden thing and every fragment of its beauty. I reach out to touch it, and just when it seems I am able to, that I can, I see that an infinite abyss separates us. I feel my own breath inside the cosmo-suit, an attire I had not even noticed before, trapping me. I stretch my hands out, but the bird is too far, too distant, too miraculous. I realize it’s not real and in the midst of it, I hear my name. I realize I am dreaming and wake up.
CHAPTER 16
