Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series)

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Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) Page 3

by Brulte, G. B.


  As real as my dream world was, I found that it just wasn’t the same without ‘real’ people.

  Giddeon and cats make for pretty good company, but even with all of the amazing things I could see and do and experience over there, all in all, I’d rather be over here. This is where she is. Whether I’m with her or not, I’d rather be where our fields of probabilities are collapsed into the same reality. I’d rather be under the same sun and the same stars.

  I want to be where I know it’s possible to actually talk to her, and touch her, and hold her hand… even if it has to end.

  Life is about love, or, at least, the possibility of love. All of the other emotions can be interesting distractions, but love is a tsunami of feeling that sweeps the rest of them away… leaving them pale, washed out and scattered on the sands of time.

  After being in a coma for four years, I’ve learned that life without love isn’t really life at all.

  Life without love is pretty much an amusement park with no electricity. All of the rides are still there, but nothing actually moves you and spins you around.

  Chapter 10

  Boris stood up to where I could see most of him, sans legs, turned around a couple of times and lay back down on his side, facing me. I ‘scratched’ him under his chin and he began to purr, again.

  “You hungry?” asked Giddeon, finishing the last of his beer.

  “I could eat.”

  “Brigantine?”

  “Sounds good… I think happy hour for the bar food is still going on.”

  “Time doesn’t really matter so much over here, but, yeah… we can still catch it.”

  Giddeon set his bottle on the table, and looked back around the interior of the boat. “This is pretty cool. How come you never take it out?”

  “Don’t know the first thing about sailing. I just like being on the water.”

  He nodded. “If you’re unconscious long enough, I’ll teach you. It’s not that hard.”

  “We’ll see…” I stood up through Boris. He meowed, but showed no inclination to roust himself from the couch. “We’d better get going.”

  Giddeon followed me to the cabin exit. We made our way outside, and I heard him close the door behind us.

  “Just leave it open for Boris. He likes to come and go,” I said.

  “Oh, right.” I saw Giddeon reach back, and for a moment, I could see two doors… one open and one closed. There was a flicker, and then, there was just the one open door.

  We stepped onto the dock under the full, Coronado moon.

  __________

  The Brigantine wasn’t very crowded. We made our way to the tables near the bar and had a seat strategically by one of the televisions. As luck would have it, a re-broadcast of a golf tournament from earlier during the day was on. We checked out the menus; none of the waitresses acknowledged us.

  Without looking up, Giddeon said, “They can’t see us. What do you have a taste for?”

  “The baked chicken sandwich… and, fries.”

  “Iced tea to drink?”

  “Sure.”

  I saw a shimmering. My plate of food and glass of tea, along with silverware wrapped in a napkin, appeared before me.

  “I’m going for the fish tacos,” said Giddeon.

  Before he had fully finished the sentence, there they were. I began unwrapping my fork and knife.

  “What do we do if someone wants this table?” I asked.

  “Won’t happen for another 53 minutes.”

  “You can see the future?”

  “There is no future.”

  “No future?”

  “Not really… the future, the past, the present… they’re all part of the same thing.”

  “Which is…?”

  “You,” said Giddeon.

  “Me?”

  “Or, them.” He motioned to the people in the room.

  “I’m not really following,” I remarked.

  “That’s because there’s no such thing as following… or, leading.” He took a bite of taco, and then continued on with his mouth full. “Or, even being in step with… all of that’s an illusion. It’s all happening at the same ‘time’.” He made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, and swallowed.

  “So in 53 minutes, someone’s going to come and sit at this table?”

  “52… in their frame of reference, which we’re observing,” he motioned to the people, again. “But, there’s an infinity of other frames in this universe. And, there’s also an infinity of other universes… each with their own endless frames. A multi-verse if you will. We could skip over to one of those, and it would be different. That someone could be sitting here, then. Or, just leaving… or, just arriving. Whatever you can imagine, it’s happening. Which leads to the question, would we be ‘choosing’ a frame of reference that matches what we wanted, or would we be ‘creating’ that frame of reference?”

  More air quotes punctuated his last sentence.

  “I really shouldn’t have taken off my hard-hat.”

  Giddeon broke into a grin. A beer appeared in his hand. He poured it into an empty mug that had come along with it.

  “Hind-sight is 20/20.” He raised his glass to me, and took a drink.

  __________

  We watched the tournament as we ate our food. As always, I found the process of how the pros worked their way around the golf course fascinating. The chicken sandwich was just right… not too hot and not too cold, not too juicy and not too dry. Seasoned perfectly. Just the way I would have wanted the sandwich to taste if I had… created it. One of my favorite golfers almost chipped in from the fringe beside the green.

  “Oh man, that was close,” I said.

  “It went in somewhere else.”

  “In another ‘frame’?” I used my fingers to make quotation marks, then.

  “Yep. That’s what makes golf so much fun. The ball has this field of probabilities all around it, and you try to choose the frame it goes into.”

  “Like the double-slit experiment?”

  “Exactly! Except there are billions of slits for the ball to fly through,” he said, looking pleased with my correlation.

  “I thought it was all about practice and dedication.”

  Giddeon nodded enthusiastically. “It is! It is! That’s what’s so cool… it’s both. Have you ever seen someone with a really funky swing, yet, they were a great golfer?”

  “Oh, yes… all the time. However, I don’t really know anybody that uses the word ‘funky’, anymore.”

  “You use it, in your head.”

  “How do you know?”

  He pointed at his temple. “It’s the same head.”

  “Humph,” I grunted, and let his curious comment pass. “Anyway, I don’t use the word ‘funky’ out loud… that’s from the 1970’s.”

  “You watched a lot of sitcom reruns when you were a kid… it kind of stuck.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Back to golf… I have a pretty good swing, but sometimes I struggle to break 90, especially on a strange course.”

  “Ninety’s a decent score, actually, from the blues… if you play by all of the rules.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “That’s because you know what’s possible,” he said. “You have a taste of picking the frames the universe contains. So do those golfers with the funky swings. They’re just better at choosing the realities than you are, most of the time. But, you do it quite often.”

  “Like when I chip in?”

  “Or, when you made that eagle with the 2 iron.”

  “That was awesome,” I said, remembering back. Apparently, he remembered it, too.

  Giddeon took another drink of his Fat Tire beer. “But, not as awesome as Melody,” he said.

  “Not even close,” I agreed.

  He smiled, seemingly happy with my answer. “Inanimate objects pale in comparison to those with their own conscious, living fields.”

  “Anything pales compared to that field.”

&nbs
p; “No argument, here.”

  I picked at my fries with my fork. Finally, I said, “I hope I come out of this coma, soon. She doesn’t even know my phone number… she’ll be expecting me to call.”

  “Yeah, I know… bummer… but, whatever will be, will be.”

  “Now you’re quoting Doris Day lyrics? Those are from the 1950’s, you know? That doesn’t really help a lot.”

  I glanced back at the television. A golfer had almost drained a forty-footer, but, it stopped right there on the edge of the cup… as if defying physics.

  He sank to his knees, and looked up to the heavens.

  __________

  After eating, we went back to the marina. Boris was gone, and even though it was early, I was feeling rather tired. Giddeon told me to get some rest; that he would be back, tomorrow. He said good night, and closed the cabin door.

  I went to the fridge, thought about getting another beer, but decided against it. I took off my clothes and collapsed in the forward bunk. The last thing I remembered before drifting off to sleep was walking beside the bay and holding Melody’s hand.

  I could almost feel her warm, soft skin against my fingers.

  Chapter 11

  I awoke to dawn light filtering in through the windows, and the sound of Boris meowing outside of the cabin door. I groaned, threw on a pair of khaki shorts, and made my way aft. I opened the door and looked down at the cat.

  “You hungry, Boris?”

  He meowed, again, and rose up on his back legs. He stood there, balanced in a way that seemed most unnatural. With surprise, I realized that only ‘my’ door was open… ‘his’ was still closed, and apparently, he had his front paws against it. I felt around in the open space for a door handle, but found nothing. Finally, I gave up and stepped outside.

  Boris was happy to see me and started meowing, again. He attempted to rub against my bare legs, but only succeeded in going back and forth through them. I could feel his fur where it intersected with my flesh, and it was very strange… like he was rubbing against the front and back of my legs at the same time. I watched with fascination, and then reached down and ‘scratched’ behind his ears.

  “I guess I’m still in a coma, boy. Can’t let you in. Maybe they have something down at the Boat House for you.” The staff at the restaurant next door was pretty good about feeding Boris and a couple of other local felines. “Wait here and we’ll go down there in a minute.”

  __________

  I went back inside, took a leak, brushed my teeth and hair, and then donned a t-shirt and flip-flops. Everything felt totally normal… just like any other morning from my previous twenty-four years of existence. I pinched myself with quite a bit of force on the cheek to make sure I was truly ‘awake’… I was. I inspected my hands, shook my head, and then made my way back aft, once again. Boris, as instructed, was waiting for me outside. We made our way down the dock and towards the restaurant; my four-legged friend heeled behind me just like a well-trained dog.

  __________

  The red-topped roof of the restaurant, similar to the one on the Hotel Del across the street, stood out against the wisps of the marine layer that were so common that time of year. The cat and I walked up to the structure, and then, down the little gang-plank that’s to the right side of it.

  There’s a porch that runs by the water sides of the building where diners can eat at wooden tables, and, since it was fairly early in the morning, they had yet to be set. I took a seat at a chair that was pulled away from an eating station. Boris jumped up into my ‘lap’ and we just sat there for a while, watching seagulls in their element amongst the sailboats of Seaforth Boat Rentals.

  Eventually, a cute waitress came through the door from the bar in order to begin preparing tables for the weekend lunch crowd. She looked over and spotted Boris.

  “Hey, Boris… whatcha doing?”

  She sauntered over and started petting and scratching the cat. He obviously knew the young brunette, and moved his head this way and that… evidently enjoying a real scratching instead of a virtual one.

  My eyes grew wide and I tried to scoot back out of the way when I noticed her hands were disappearing around Boris into my crotch area. As that was happening, Giddeon came walking down the planks.

  “Whoa! What’s going on here?”

  “It’s not what it looks like… she’s friends with Boris.”

  “Looks like she’s ‘in’ to you, too.”

  “Very funny… have a seat.”

  He pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. For a moment, I had the unsettling image of two chairs… the original one still in place and the other one into which he sat. The waitress gave one final rub to the cat and stood back up.

  “I’ll get you some milk. Don’t you go anywhere,” she instructed Boris as she went back into the bar area.

  Giddeon watched her go, and then asked, “How did you sleep?”

  “Like a log. I guess I’m still in a coma. How did the surgery go?”

  He nodded. “The doctors seem pleased. You’re in ICU.”

  “Great… I figured I must have survived. I haven’t seen any tunnels of light.”

  “Neither have I… I can show you what to look for, if you want.”

  I shook my head back and forth. “No thanks… I’ll wait.” Boris tilted his head up and meowed, as if congratulating me on a smart decision. “I wonder if they’ve notified my brother.”

  “He’s on his way out. Should get here sometime this afternoon.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I overheard some of the nurses talking.”

  That, amongst a host of other things, puzzled me.

  “How could you overhear the doctors and the nurses if I’m unconscious?”

  He brushed his hair back from his eyes with his fingers. “Your brain is still working… just not the way it normally does.”

  “So… what you were saying is true… this isn’t really a dream, is it?”

  “Not technically,” Giddeon said, “but, close enough that there is some common ground.”

  I looked him over in the morning light. He sure seemed real.

  “Humph,” I grunted after a long pause. I thought for a few seconds more, and then asked a question that had been on my mind since the night before.

  “Are you an angel?”

  Giddeon let out a laugh. “Hardly… I’m you.”

  My eyebrows went up on my forehead. “Me? You don’t look like me.”

  “I’m your subconscious. I don’t really look like anybody… this is just convenient for you… I mean me… I mean you…”

  I rolled my eyes at his lame joke.

  “Well… you seem like you’re a lot smarter than me.”

  “You’re plenty smart. You just don’t use all of your faculties.”

  “And, you?”

  He brushed his hair back from his eyes, again, leaned back in the chair and spread his hands wide as if presenting himself.

  “This is just the rest of your faculties in action.”

  “Humph,” I grunted, once more. “All of that stuff about quantum physics, frames of reference, and, tunnels of light… not to mention sailing boats… I don’t know much about any of those. You seem like an expert.”

  “You know more than you think you do.”

  I was about to respond, but just then the waitress came out with a saucer of milk. Boris jumped right through my hands to the floor.

  “Here you go, Boris! How about leaving a tip, this time?”

  She scratched him for a few moments as he lapped up the white fluid. Then, the brunette sashayed back inside. I watched the cat enjoy his breakfast and contemplated what Giddeon had said. Finally, I asked,

  “How can I know more than I do? That doesn’t make any sense. I’m no Einstein… just ask my school guidance counselor if you don’t believe me.”

  Giddeon nodded, again, and pursed his lips as if pondering. After a second or two he said, “You know all of the times when you
had the T.V. on and weren’t really watching it? Or, when talk radio was playing in another room, and you could just barely hear it? Also, all of those books, magazines and newspapers you flipped through while waiting for an appointment?”

  “Yeah…?”

 

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