“Too weird,” said Giddeon. “There were no inscriptions… like she didn’t need an introduction.”
“Bizarre.” I shook my head.
“Humph,” Giddeon grunted.
We were walking along the same green path on which we had traveled to arrive at the noon time meal. This time, we were headed in the other direction. I looked around me at the terrain which was filled with a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar vegetation. Flowers on nearby vines and trees were in the process of opening; most seemed to emit a sweet fragrance into the early afternoon air, and the mixture of smells was wonderful. “Giddeon… is any of this even real? I mean, there are so many alternate futures… do you think it’s possible that you just picked one subconsciously that has a direct connection to us?”
“I am the subconscious… I’m not sure I have one.”
“Humph.” It was my turn to grunt. He had a point. “Well, I told you she was special.”
“That she is… that she is,” agreed my counterpart. We walked on in silence for a bit. Finally, my companion spoke, “Hey… did you notice anything about the guy she was holding?”
“Not really… I was concentrating on her. What about him?”
Giddeon was quiet for a moment, as if deciding something. Then,
“He sort of looked like you.”
__________
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the planet. The beaches were indeed nude beaches. The only difference between nude beaches there and on Earth was that instead of old, out-of-shape men and the occasional, adventurous middle-aged woman, everyone on Eden was in their prime. It looked like the cast of some hip, young T.V. series was filming naked on the sands. They even surfed in the buff.
The cities were amazing. The architecture and designs were phenomenal… like Frank Lloyd Wright on steroids and acid. From what I could tell, the population centers were mostly laid out with a central plaza, and the streets radiated outwards from them like spokes of a wheel. No flying cars… at least, not any that I saw. I did see some spheres that may have contained people and products, but, they moved about more like dirigibles, sort of slow and deliberate. When they reached their destinations, they would shimmer and disappear.
Even Giddeon just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders at that.
There were bicycles, motorcycles and scooters, much like we have on Earth… except there was no sound from engines of any kind. Periodically, on the larger routes, a vehicle of sorts would glide by, inches off the ground as if held up by some type of magnetic repulsion. The cities had a definite perimeter, and at the edges there were no suburbs… just an immediate transition to green vegetation and flowers.
I wondered about the power sources for all of the inhabitants inside the bustling cities… not to mention all of the rural dwellings surrounded by gardenlike countryside.
“Solar, mostly,” said Giddeon, reading my mind. “They have the conversion of energy up to about 98 percent efficiency. Graphene, carbon nano-sheets discovered during our time, plays a big part in the process. Also,” he motioned in the atmosphere, “they’ve begun to harvest those pairs of ‘virtual particles’ I told you about… the ones that pop into and out of existence.”
I noticed he had been using his hands even more often in conversation than he normally did… maybe he was spending too much time in Italy when he was gone.
He continued, “They quickly separate them before they can annihilate each other in a matter/antimatter type reaction, and somehow use the energy stored between them. I don’t really understand the technicalities.”
“Huh? You don’t say? Now, you know what I feel like with my 5.9 percent.”
“You’re over 6, I just didn’t want to listen to you crow about it.”
I imitated the sound of a rooster, much to his delight. Then, I said, “Shouldn’t we be getting back?”
“Not yet. There’s a show tonight in the central plaza. I don’t think you want to miss it.”
“A concert?”
“Of sorts. Have you ever seen the Cirque du Soleil?”
“No. I’ve heard about it, though.”
“Boy, are you in for a treat.”
Chapter 52
That night, a beautiful, blue-tinted moon rose into the heavens above us.
Thousands of people were gathered in and around the city’s plaza, and the atmosphere of the place was quite festive. Music permeated the surroundings… however, I couldn’t make out the source of the sounds. Restaurants and cafes were all along the periphery of the vast open expanse, and many people had choice seats at outdoor tables. We milled about for twenty minutes, or so, walking this way and that while taking in the foreign environment. Finally, the show began. It was preceded by a hush in the crowd. The lights of the entire city dimmed, all somehow coordinated with the event.
Music began to play. Soft at first, then, strong and powerful. It was all encompassing. The sounds were a mixture of recognizable and unfamiliar instruments, and was what I would label ‘classical’, although, I’m not sure that does it justice. The forceful tones and rhythms carried on for the better part of a minute, and then, something extraordinary happened.
A woman in a glowing red, skin-tight outfit ascended at least a hundred feet into the air. She somehow hung there, floating, silhouetted against the moon, and gracefully moved and rotated… almost like a dancer on a stage. She seemed to grow in size; at first I thought that she was descending… then, I realized the effect was caused by a projection from her suit.
The red light of the fabric had expanded outwards in a hologram. A hologram shaped exactly like her unsupported body.
Five more dancers leaped from the ground… three men and two women, all colored in blue. They rose quickly in unison. The group gracefully cart-wheeled in the sky and surrounded the first woman in a circle, each maybe thirty or forty yards from her center. The light from their suits, likewise, began to expand as it had done from the original woman’s outfit; they were all then facing the ground, like skydivers that were dipped in acrylic, frozen in place.
I was awestruck by the beauty of the spectacle, and after a few seconds of their stillness against the heavens, the music stopped. The lights from the city and the suits all went out simultaneously, leaving an afterimage on my retinas. Suddenly, the music came back with a vengeance; at the same time, the dancers in the sky re-illuminated. There appeared a sheet of gold light which filled the inside of the circle… it connected the five on the periphery to the original performer. The fabric/hologram encasing the female in the center then became an even more brilliant shade of red.
She rose higher and higher into the sky, dragging the golden sheet with her as if it were a thin leaf of latex… almost like a trampoline pulled in an upwards direction. The whole scene took on the appearance of a beautiful, yellow cone; blue at the bottom and red at the apex.
‘Ooohs’ and ‘ahhs’ from the crowd, present since the first appearance of the artists, increased in frequency and depth. The cone then began to slowly change into a uniform color that can best be described as a deep, phosphorescent green. The woman at the top held her arms close to her body, and then quickly began to fall, gathering speed as she plummeted towards the ‘earth’, bringing her trampoline of light behind her. She came to an abrupt halt, maybe five feet from the ground, as people screamed in delight. The screams were also mingled with fear for their performer.
As if on a giant bungee cord, the woman was then pulled rapidly back in the other direction, all completely timed with the music.
She shot once again into the air, and as she passed through the center of the circle, the golden sheet detached and dissipated in a plethora of colors… reminding me of the aurora borealis as it dissolved into the magical night.
The artist continued her ascent, flipping and spinning; her suit, which was red, again, glowed brighter and brighter as she went. She came to a stop high above the others, who were quickly enveloped in an ethereal, pearlescent purple. A beam of w
hite light came from each of the dancers below and connected with the ruby encased beauty above.
They began to spin, like children do around a Maypole, except that there was no pole… no visible means of support at all.
As we watched with complete fascination, the most complicated choreography and laser show imaginable ensued.
The members of the aerial ballet swooped and flew, rose and fell. They spun off and around each other in a kaleidoscope of interaction that’s difficult to explain. The music was perfectly matched to the motions, and the colors were sometimes monochromatic, sometimes psychedelic, and always brilliant. Often, the dancers would come down close to the crowd, and people would reach up and touch their extended hands. A small child begged to be picked up, so, the woman in red took her and held her close. They levitated and spun with the music, but never more than five feet off the ground. Trails of scarlet circled out around them in a silken, luminous spiral.
The crowd cheered when the woman returned the child to her mother. I have never seen such an expression of pure joy as was on the little girl’s face. The lead dancer then rejoined the troupe, and the show continued.
The finale was most unexpected. It was done to Pink Floyd… ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. Words would be an inadequate way to attempt a description, so, I won’t even try.
At the end of the performance, somehow, the actual moon dimmed in the night sky above us, as if by an eclipse. Only an outline of the celestial body remained.
We were all left in blue-tinged darkness, with memories of dancing light just inside our heads.
I saw a shooting star arc its way across the sky. I made a wish that Melody could see all of this, someday.
Chapter 53
Back on the boat, I sat on the deck, alone, under the stars. Well, I wasn’t alone, exactly, because Boris was at my feet. However, he was asleep, so it felt like I was alone. I looked up into the heavens and contemplated fate.
If there were so many realities, how could there possibly be such a thing?
Was it fate that I met Melody that day? That our lives had intersected, briefly, at a quick nexus in time, before multitudes of worlds spun off again from that point? Were we only to have held hands that one time, and then been torn apart in that frame of reference? Or, in another reality, was I awake and not in a coma? Were she and I next to each other, still holding hands and finishing each other’s sentences? Letting each other have bites of our desserts, or tastes from daily meals off of each other’s forks? Was I teaching her to play golf, or, was she teaching me to paint?
Was she accomplishing something fantastic, with me at her side… something that would be remembered thousands of years into the future?
It was all so confusing.
Did every possibility exist like Giddeon said? If so, then it seemed like everything was fated. Each and every moment, each and every emotion… each and every particle in each and every place. It didn’t seem quite right to me.
I considered that maybe fate was simply which of the realities were experienced, and which were left to spin off into infinity… real, yet, not so real, after all.
Still, it was perplexing. I looked into the heavens and wondered… ‘If everything’s in the same place, then, why does she seem so far away?’
I saw another shooting star streak across the night sky… once again, I heard the lines from Jack London that Giddeon had recited:
‘I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
Than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.’
The irony was that with all of the things I had seen and done, and all of the places I had been and experienced over there… I didn’t feel like a superb meteor at all. Is a meteor really magnificent if, after traveling for eons, it puts on a display in the upper atmosphere of a sleepy planet, and no one is there to see it burn? Is the flame wasted in the darkness if there is no one to see it glow?
If no one is looking up to make a wish, does the meteor at least get to make one before scattering forever into ash?
I went inside and fell asleep. Sometime during the night, Boris joined me.
Chapter 54
The next day I went to play golf by myself since Giddeon was a no show. I presumed he was either back on his newfound planet or checking out the Italian girl from over 2000 years ago… or, I thought, maybe, he was somewhere else, entirely. I doubted very much that he was asleep, but I couldn’t really have sworn to it. All batteries eventually lose their charge… he’s definitely a Duracell, or an Eveready, or one of those long lasting ones, though.
The air was cool and I thought that maybe I should have brought a long-sleeved shirt. But, then, the sun came out and it became exceptionally nice… perhaps seventy-two degrees with just a hint of a breeze.
There were a few people on the course, so I just played right through them, literally. Sometimes, I would stop and listen to their conversations on the greens or tees, and when I did, it almost felt like I was part of the group.
Every now and then I would walk along with a foursome, tee it up right beside them, and say things like ‘Good shot!’ or ‘Bite!’ or ‘Nice putt!’ when it was warranted. All in all, if felt like a normal day in Paradise… except for the fact that no one could see me or hear me.
On the way home, though, Paradise changed.
__________
I had driven my Focus to the course, and when I was done with the round, deposited my clubs in the trunk. I got into the automobile, cranked the engine, and noticed that the fuel gauge, as always, was on ‘Full’. I pulled out onto Glorietta and took a left towards the marina. I went slowly, because of the speed bumps, and played the radio on my way back, singing along with David Bowie… the song was ‘Changes’.
I was in a good mood. When I was almost home, however, I saw something that made my comatose heart grow cold. Very, very cold. There, in the street, was a cat.
It had obviously been hit by a car.
__________
The feline was close to the shoulder on the marina side of the thoroughfare, and the coloring of it was so familiar that my mind began to instantly rebel at the possibility. I thought, ‘No… no… no… certainly it can’t be…’
I got closer, slowed and pulled sharply to the right, onto the curb. From across the pavement I could see blood was by the animal’s mouth, pooling on the gray surface underneath it. In what felt like slow motion, I opened the door and made my way onto the road without looking, still hoping against hope that I was wrong. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.
A car went right past me, unbelievably close, but I didn’t pay it any attention.
I ran to the other side of the street and knelt down beside the cat. It was struggling to breathe… red liquid from its mouth was mixed with saliva, making foam bubbles on the cement. There was a large gash on its cheek, and I could see fascia and bone through the torn epidermis. I reached down and tried to gently pet it.
He looked up with big yellow eyes, and gave a pitiful attempt at a meow.
It was Boris.
I began to shake, and to cry. “No… no… no…” I repeated, out loud, that time. “No, Boris! You’re gonna be alright, buddy!”
I reached out to him, but my hands just went right through his little body to the road below.
“Boris… Boris… I’m gonna help you… Boris!! You’re gonna be okay!” I tried and tried to get my hands under him, so I could get him out of the boulevard and onto the grass, but, it wouldn’t work. Tears began to flow copiously from my eyes, and my nose started running with mucus. I had never felt anything like what was going on inside of me at that moment. My constant companion for the last three years was laid out before me, blood leaking from his body, and I could do nothing… nothing, at all.
A car approached and slowed… I saw a teenage girl peer
over with an anguished look at my animal on the side of the road. I screamed to her through her open passenger window.
“Help! Help!! Please stop! Pleasssse, stop!! He needs a vet! Pl-please… take him to a vet!!!”
My diaphragm began contracting in sobs. “H-he needs a vet! Please! Please… help him!!”
I continued to yell after her, but, she kept right on motoring. I could see her eyes in the rear view mirror as she got further and further away.
“Please… please… come back! Please… he-help him… please… oh, please…”
I begged until I could no longer see her eyes. Of course, she couldn’t hear me. I reached up to wipe at my nose. Blood was on my hands and it smeared on my face. I hunkered down, still doing my very best to try and comfort my pet.
Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) Page 21
