I must be on the wrong track, he decided. Anyway, it was time to switch off and get some shut-eye. High time, he thought, and grinned from ear to ear.
“Thanks for trying,” she said.
They were sitting, again, this time on earthly looking chairs disposed in the main chamber of their house, on the Home planet. The arched ceiling added an undefined dimension to the large room. Bit funny, he thought. The chairs appeared to be made from white marble, yet they felt soft. Dreaming is fun, he concluded, while duly noting, once more, that he looked close to thirty. Thirty years of age, that is. At least Sandra did, and here she was always about his age. “At least I have not slipped backwards,” he mused.
“You’ll help me?” he pleaded aloud.
Alec knew he was asleep on his bed at home, but this did not matter. The two realities seemed perfectly compatible. And he’d learned to distinguish the characteristics of his various bodies. They really did obey different sets of laws.
“You got side-tracked by the time factor, which led you to Einstein. Your lesson did deal with time, but from a different angle. In fact, you were very close to it.”
Alec desperately tried to invoke the vision of volcanoes popping up in a sea of green slime.
“Forget the slime. You noted there and then that you had traveled in both directions simultaneously. Until that very moment, you were strictly a one-direction time-traveler.”
“I knew that!” he said.
“Precisely. But you also learned, or at least it was shown to you, that you can actually learn in different—what you call—time zones. You also learned about the self-reproducing gene’s being the building block of biological reality. And we can only experience the physical or material reality through a biological entity. Nothing else works.”
“It has been shown to me...?”
“A turn of phrase. But you’re right. Again, at the very ground of your being, you are the only reality. I think you should wait on this concept until we finish with the present one.”
“There’s more?”
“Just because I’m here, it doesn’t mean that you’re supposed to stop thinking, you know,” she almost snapped. That is, as much as the most beautiful Princess in the whole world can snap.
“Sorry...” And after a moment’s reflection he continued. “I’ve learned that time is flexible and that I’m not subject to it, with the exception of living in the physical reality. I’ve also learned that in the physical reality I must assume a biological form to gain any experience. I suppose that means to learn anything. But that’s just about...”
He caught himself short. There was something else. It was so close he could touch it. Feel it. Smell it.
“No, Alec, you can’t smell it.” But this time her tone was amused.
He had it. “In my second, ah... regression, I learned that I am independent from both, from time and space!” he concluded triumphantly.
“Which means...?”
It means something? Isn’t that enough? She wasn’t helping.
“It must mean that, that...”
“That since any reality is, by definition, an expression of time and space, you must assume some kind of a body to experience the mode of becoming. Whatever the reality. In other words, there is no experience of being other than in a mode of being. But the modes are not limited to biological forms.”
“And the mode of being in any reality is becoming. And becoming means change.” Once again Alec missed the point.
“Get some rest, for a change,” Sandra said and was gone.
***
It came as a delayed reaction. It’s been more than two months since her first exhibition. Being the principle organizer, Alicia had to contain her emotions to make sure that all went well. With her husband at work and Alec busy on his computer, she was producing yet another masterpiece, to sate Monsieur Cellini’s voracious appetite for her watercolor flowers, in all shapes and sizes. She left nudes to Zaza, and returned to her original love.
“There,” she murmured. “I think I like that…”
She put her brush down, trilled it in a jar of water, and sat back. Smiling to herself, she recalled how it had all began.
Within the second week of the exhibition, she had sold two more paintings, making it five out of seven. Monsieur Cellini called her to advise her of the sale of her fifth work. She listened carefully, thanked him for letting her know and slowly, in perfect command of her senses, practically in a trance, she replaced the receiver. As she didn’t have an exalted opinion about her talents, her apparent success came almost as a shock to her.
Within seconds Monsieur Cellini called again. This time he’d asked her if she’d agree to leave her remaining two works with him on commission. She nodded three times before swallowing hard and answering.
“That would be just fine, Monsieur Cellini. That would be just fine.” And in case Monsieur Cellini might possibly change his mind, she quickly hanged up.
That was when it happened.
She got up and began to dance a series of dances, some of which she’d never heard of before. It was a goulash made up of Hungarian czardas, blended with a waltz, tango, a Russian troika and a few other rhythmic maneuvers she couldn’t name but seemed strangely reminiscent of the jungle drums of the darkest Africa. If she were to define them all by a single word she would call it a dance of Joy. A completely unrestrained, uninhibited, devil-may-care whirl of Joy, with a capital ’J’, such as she hadn’t experienced since she was a little girl.
When Alex Senior came back from work that day, her cheeks were still flushed, her heart still beating a bit quicker than normal. She told him about the fifth sale.
Alex’s reaction was more restrained than hers, but his pleasure was nearly as evident. He picked her up, swirled with her like a minor tornado, and put her down as though afraid of harming his precious cargo.
“I don’t believe it,” he uttered only then.
“I can’t believe it either,” she confessed also.
“And he wants to keep the last two on commission.”
“He what?!”
“On commission!” she repeated raising her arms for another whirl.
Just then Alec Junior came through the door. He sensed something strange was taking place.
“What is it, Mom, Pop?” His eyes were wide open.
“We can’t believe it,” his parent replied in unison. “We just can’t believe it,” his mother repeated, looking at his father with true disbelief in her eyes.
They, all three of them, ate a celebratory dinner at Che Grandpére, in Old Montreal. Shrimp cocktails steeped in Amontillado were followed by Canard á l’orange washed down with Nuits-Saint-Georges that even Alec Junior agreed had something he enjoyed, though he did prefer his own lemonade. They finished with coffee and Baba-au-Rhum—Junior’s choice—just to catch up on his parent’s alcoholic intake. He alone had two helpings.
Throughout dinner Alicia smiled left and right, as though returning glances that surely people must have stolen at her. After all, how often did they share a restaurant with a famous artist? Her imagination was confirmed when towards the end of the Baba, Alex Senior got to his feet, raised his glass, and proposed a toast to the greatest artist in Montreal.
Whatever you might deny the French Canadians, there is one attribute that you must give them. They like having fun. Every single man sitting at five or six adjacent tables rose also, raised their glasses and drank a toast to Alicia. Then they replaced their glasses and gave her a stormy applause. Alex had the good sense to raise the toast in French.
It bears mentioning that all men were total strangers.
“Ah, yes, I remember eet well,” she mused, thinking of Gigi, and the array of aspiring painters on the slopes of Montmartre. Gigi still remained one of her favorite movies.
***
The whole of the next day Alec couldn’t shake off the feeling that they had still left something very important out of the equation. He racked his brain. Surely
Sandra would not have left if he were able to understand that missing fragment.
The day was sunny, so he decided to go for a walk. The Lachine Canal was frozen over. Not yet the thick, impenetrable ice of Canadian winter, but thick enough to support twenty or so ducks, which must have forgotten to fly south for the winter. Poor ducks, he thought. He made a mental note to bring some bread for them the next time he went for a walk.
But the real reason he went to the Lachine Canal was Suzy. This was where they’d said so-long just before she and her parents flew to Florida. She was the youngest of the four Norman children. The other three, all boys, men by now, had already left home. You could say that she was an after-thought. Perhaps that is why John Norman seemed so dedicated to making her happy. Alec knew he had retired two years ago, which made him about sixty-seven. The poor guy was probably a little afraid that he might not see her grow up.
Funny how different people manage to find different reasons to make themselves miserable. Mr. Norman wasn’t really miserable, but he did spoil Su. All she had to do was to mention something, anything at all, and daddy—‘papa’ on occasion—would come a-running.
Then Alec managed to find a loose stone on the sparsely covered ground. There was no more than half an inch of snow, so far. It might disappear with the next sunny day. Probably by the end of today.
Then he flung the stone into the open water, right next to the locks.
“Good for her,” he muttered. “Good for her.”
27
The Missing Link
Alec decided to study his parents in the context of knowledge he gained on his inner travels. This was the second time he’d really tried to understand mom and dad. On both occasions his parents obliged by going out, and Alec became the sole possessor of dad’s armchair. Somehow the two went together. The chair and thinking about his parents.
Neither mom nor dad gave any indication of unusual modes of being. They just lived, in the truest sense of the word. Mother was perhaps a little better than dad at extracting the elixir of life. Her ability to find beauty in just about everything was astounding. She could rave about the disposition of spots on a ladybug. She would get quite dreamy about the shape of a lonely cloud. As for Canadian autumn colours, well, there was hardly talk of anything else for weeks on end.
Dad was different. Men always are, Alec supposed.
Dad’s work gave him a considerable dose of satisfaction, but not real joy. Work, for dad, was duty. Albeit very pleasant, interesting, but still an obligation. It was something he had to do, regardless of whether he enjoyed it or not. Normally he did, but there were times, occasions Alec noticed, that dad was ready to chuck it all, buy a bigger boat and spend the rest of his life cruising the seven seas.
Now that might not be such a bad idea, Alec mused with a grin.
The spark in dad’s eyes when he gazed at mother in the cockpit of the Alicia, that very look seemed to explain the core of his dad’s being. Alec loved his father for this almost child-like devotion to his mom, but wondered if this was quite the right way to live. He wondered if one had a right to live, well... at somebody else’s expense, almost. In the emotional sense.
Dad appeared to derive joy just from watching his mother. His father wasn’t so good at discovering the jewels haphazardly disposed on his journey, but seemed to breathe in the joy emanating from mom. She was his catalyst, his raison d’être, virtually his private Universe. A little like Mr. Norman in relation to his daughter Susanna. But not the same. Dad did not just love Alec’s mother; he was in love with her. Although Mr. Norman may have, on occasion, created a comparative impression, the difference was obvious to anyone who knew them both.
But didn’t one have to contribute a sort of intense act of living to the fabric of the world? To the fabric of reality? Not just rejoice in the fabric’s being already there?
“True, I mostly contribute such intensity within my inner worlds. But, if Sandra has her way, I will eventually translate this intensity to the physical realm. Or, at least, I’ll try.”
He wanted to add, ‘or I’ll die trying’, but thought that was pushing it. He did not think of himself as any type of martyr. Dying was not really part of his vocabulary. He just wanted to leave this world a more exciting place than it was when he was born.
“And that’s precisely what I mean by just living.”
“But don’t you have to do something... heroic?” Alec answered before he realized who had spoken.
“It is often most heroic to do very little. To take on one’s destiny and let it unfold as it should,” Sandra continued
“That’s just words...” Alec wouldn’t give in so easily. “Don’t we create our own destiny?”
“We do. But you have to define what you mean by ‘we’.”
“You and I?” And even as he said it, Alec knew that the two peas didn’t seem to share their destinies in quite the same way. They were one, but... There was still that unexplained ‘but’. Perhaps it would be resolved at the Next Step.
“Let’s leave the concept of ego till later. There is a Chinese expression, Wu wei er wu pu wei, which means, literally: “taking no action, there is no not acting.” This philosophy is attributed to Lao-tzu, but it was known long before that. I believe what the saying is trying to express is our attitude to reality.”
“You sound as if you want me to sit back and do nothing.”
“Not at all. But we must never forget that the bodies we occupy in any particular reality are only a means for our true selves to experience a mode of becoming. And it is almost impossible, due to the limitations that, for instance, a biological reality imposes, to encompass the full scope of free consciousness.”
There ensued a prolonged silence. Alec was not very impressed with Sandra’s latest offering. The concept of ‘just living’ had begun to take on a new hue. He would not have to struggle, fight, or conquer. He just had to be. It sounded dull. On the other hand, perhaps he would have to do all three, but...
Light was just beginning to dawn on him. Perhaps he might have to do all three, and much more...
For an instant of eternity he hung suspended in the most impenetrable darkness of nothingness; the pre-time potential Universe. Before he fully realized it, he was back, stretching on dad’s chair, an aura of Sandra’s presence permeating him.
Although it wasn’t his first visit to such unfamiliar surroundings, for some minutes he remained disoriented. There was an element of shock in finding oneself confined to a body with such limited coordinates after experiencing...
...after experiencing what, precisely?
Sandra waited for Alec to find himself. Slowly, he did.
“T-t-time is a v-very funny thing…” he stammered at last.
“It helps to arrange experiences into a sequence. It stops them from happening all at once,” she said gently.
“Ha, ha, that’s funny.” Alec was gradually relaxing. “All at once...”
But there was something more substantial in what she’d just said. If there were no time, and if all the realities already existed in their potential forms, then they would actually happen all at once. Rather like a seventy-piece symphony orchestra playing all the instruments and maybe all the notes at once. Simultaneously. Only the symphony of the Universe would be infinite and not just limited to our ears...
But even when we look at a painting of a beautiful landscape, we do seem to ‘take it in’ in a single sweep. All at once. So there are moments when we, even here on Earth, are liberated from the sequence imposed by time. But then… Alec cringed when he realized the immensity of the Universe, and again when the non-space of his last regression touched and almost overpowered him.
“What was that place?”
There was no answer. It wasn’t a place, he answered himself. There were no places back then. Only, in a strange way, it wasn’t back then. It was outside time, and therefore it was as much then as now.
As much then as now...
Slowly, very slo
wly, Alec was allowing the meaning of his last trip to penetrate his present resistance. He was beginning to appreciate the immensity of the responsibility of every human being, of every intelligent creature in the endless realities. If infinite potential was already there, we were the creators of realities. They were created from a bottomless fountain of infinite love that churned at the very core of our being. We—he himself—we all are fragments of that love that generates potential realities in which that which is regards Itself, as though in a mirror. Conversely, we regard ourselves, or can do so, in the mirror of our true Self.
“Each one of us...?” were the first words Alec uttered.
“Potentially. Each one of us has that potential.”
“But how???” He knew it but he couldn’t accept it emotionally.
“Because it is in our nature. We are indivisible parts of the Original State of Being. Through us, through the realities we create, the Becoming...”
“...is the mode in which that which is can experience Itself...”
Words seemed so inadequate. Poets have written thousands of odes, psalms, runes, yet none have done the concept justice. There is no way one can do justice to that which is beyond imagination, beyond definition. Beyond reality itself.
“The infinite potential...” he now talked in whispers. “So that is what is meant by infinite love... The infinite oneness...”
“Individual means indivisible. We all are.” Sandra added. For the first time her tone was filled with as much reverence as his own.
When Alec’s parents came back, he spent a few hours with them. It was amazing how very relaxing his parents were. They certainly didn’t seem to require heroic actions to make their day. Nor were they in need of world-shaking achievements. Alec wondered if they were doing exactly what Sandra was talking about. He doubted he would ever find out for sure. It might be that no man is an island unto himself, but the water surrounding him or her created a formidable moat.
ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy) Page 21
