I Will Rise
Page 7
“But—”
Annabelle raises a hand. “Just listen. It’s going to get a little complicated. You might not be able to understand everything I am about to tell you. Don’t get frustrated. Just give it time to settle. You ready?”
I shrug.
She begins to speak and I can’t help but get frustrated because nothing makes sense. At first. But as I listen and give myself over, Annabelle turns to a sweet purple cloud and flitters into my head via my left ear. Spreading and settling over my brain, she explains herself without the use of clumsy, inefficient words.
Here is a flawed, labored abstraction of what she had to say:
I am a dream.
I am god.
I am time and space.
I am Annabelle.
I am Officer Lumpy and Paunch.
I am everything.
I am the only one who can save our world.
In a nutshell: the earth chose me. My hand, that odd collection of nerves, that gimp-fuckup bastard, is the key to our salvation. It is the nucleus at the center of all organa. It is not only the destroyer of my life; it is to be the destroyer of all humanity.
Needless to say, all of this makes me smile. I don’t believe it, but it’s nice to hear just the same. I am important. I am salvation. Nice.
Annabelle continues on.
Let me preface what comes next by saying that I am an idiot. There is so much I don’t know it’s ridiculous and when Annabelle tells me nothing is real, I am inclined to believe her because I have nothing in my brains with which to refute her claims.
So then, nothing is real. Nothing. My beloved god, your beloved car, houses, children, nothing. Everything in our world is a projection, a manifestation manifested by another. We are nothing more than terrestrial dreams. Things work like this: something unknowable sleeps and dreams our planet into existence. Our planet sleeps and dreams us into existence. When we sleep we dream our universe and when our universe sleeps it dreams yet another world into being. The cycle is virtually endless. There is a beginning and an end somewhere, but they are beyond our comprehension, buried under the weight of a million dreaming worlds.
According to Annabelle, this is the structure of existence. Assuming I believe her—and I do—within this structure there are limits and guidelines. There is a systematic layering and an infallible sense of timing in place. When we wake up our dreams flitter and fade and die only to be reborn when we go back to sleep. When the planet wakes, our world will wisp apart only to be recomposed, albeit differently, in another dream. In proper time that which dreams our planet will wake, thereby undoing the planet and everything it dreams. Our subsistence, prehistory, evolving futures, sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, dinosaurs, love, cheeseburgers, everything in your head, everything in my head, all that is now, was and ever shall be, world without end, amen, exists only within the ebb and flow of a single planetary dream.
Our lifetimes, thousands upon thousands of years, are taking place in the span of one planetary night.
Here but not really here.
Impossible?
Probably, but Annabelle has a logical explanation. Every dream is allowed the luxury of believing it is the dreamer. A healthy superiority complex prevents us from conceding the fact that we are merely being dreamed. Our dreams misunderstand us just as much as we misunderstand them. What do you suppose would happen if our dreams, the worlds we create each night as we power down, were to figure out that we were dreaming them? What if they were able to break us down, identify our dream process and dissect it into basic, tangible components. What if they refused to accept their place as dreams and decided to use this information to take over?
What if?
Take a look around. Humanity is taking over. Be it a conscious effort or an inauspicious accident, we have discovered how to subvert the dream and become, for lack of a better word, real. It’s all about progression. It’s about our reality becoming too big for the world that governs it. The basics of the planetary dream—nature, magic, organic energy—are losing their place. It’s all about our intellectual and emotional investments in the things we create. By turning artifice to spirit, construct to mentality, we are building god. We are programming heaven. Before long the coding that powers our handiwork will overtake the world. We will drown in a sea of ones and zeroes, and the planet, our dreamer, will suffocate. That which dreams the planet will in turn seize and our digital god—contaminating world after world, disrupting dream after dream until there is nothing left but a universal ocean of unending digital blue—will reign supreme and dead and cold. Exit the natural world. Exit the power of dream. Exit magic and mysticism. Exit life.
Enter the new heaven. Annabelle explains that as it stands, when we die our dream souls are simply recycled. They are the fabric of our dream space and help to maintain the veracity of the dream. Our constructs, however, have changed the way things work and are weakening the integrity of the dream. They are halting the recycling process and sucking souls into the digital void. That’s where I was a few minutes ago. That’s where you will go when you die. Before long the dream will lack the souls to continue building the world around us. Before long the digital void will have too many souls. The infection will bleed over and world after dreaming world will be corrupted.
We are a dream out of control.
We are moving way too fast.
We must be stopped.
Heavy stuff, huh? Probably not even worth thinking about. Probably crazy. Probably, but here’s the good part, here’s where I come in.
The hand’s plan: lie dormant, act up when necessary, keep me down, keep me unhappy, keep me resentful and give me the strength to do what must be done. Make me loathe humanity. Make me despise its undying thirst for advancement. Prepare me for my purpose.
The hand, as ancient as time itself.
And I am not the loser I thought I was. I am merely an instrument in the primordial design. I have been made to wait. The time is now.
In moments I will be returned to my earthly body. I will be dead. I will be reborn. I will have the power to destroy every last shred of humanity and return it, and its wealth of recyclable souls, back into the soil of the planet where they belong. Technological progress will grind to a stop, the digital blue will fade and I will be responsible for restoring balance and ridding the dream of all ugly human ambition. All it takes is a touch from my hand. Instant death. Instant salvation. The earth will continue on free from human infection and one day after the dream has run its natural course it will awaken. And it will sleep. And it will wake. World without end.
Annabelle the purple cloud exits my head and recomposes a few feet before me. Again, she looks incredible. Again, I can’t help thinking that I know her. I bite my lower lip and fight off heated thoughts.
“You get all that?”
I sigh and roll my eyes and make like I am exasperated.
“I know,” Annabelle sympathizes, “It’s a lot to take in. And believe it or not there’s more. There is a series of steps between here and the end. We’ll save those for later. Let everything else sink in first. Besides, I am not supposed to talk about it, I am just supposed to guide you.”
“This is ridiculous. What if I refuse to follow your instruction,” I say only half seriously.
“You don’t really have a choice. This isn’t even your dream. Whatever happens will happen because of the dreamer, not because of the decisions we choose not to make.” She shakes her head and gives me a disappointed frown. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to you. You are no longer Charles Baxter, the lifetime loser. You are now Charles Baxter, the most important man in the world. Don’t let us down.”
I sigh again.
“Look, it’s a lot to understand and in time it will make sense. In the meantime you have me help you along.” Annabelle smiles big.
“Great,” my voice sick with sarcasm, “it’s me the super-loser and Ms. Fuck You Rebellion against the human machine.” I smile back.
“What?” What now?
“I am a byproduct of your anticommercial, pent-up, sexually repressed neurosis. I only look like this because you want me to look like this.” She tugs at her too-tight T-shirt, “These clothes”—and musses her hair— “this god-awful red hair”—and cups her hands over her chest—“these impossible breasts, oh and lest I forget, that horrible vision of me straddling that dog, it’s all you. Look at yourself for Christ’s sake.” Annabelle points for emphasis. “This bulging, unreal hunk of flesh is your creation; it’s your vision.”
I look over my too-perfect physique and blush with embarrassment. This is all too much. Changing the subject, I ask, “Aren’t we ready to go back yet? Don’t we have some Most Important Man in the World type stuff to do?”
“In a minute. First things first.” Annabelle raises a finger and traces a rectangle into the air. A chunk of the unending white falls away to reveal a two-dimensional, floating, flickering television screen. The image of a woman appears. She is wearing faded, food-stained flannel pajamas, sitting on a brown couch, sleeping, head lulled to the side. Her dark brown hair is long and tangled and run through with streaks of gray. She is probably in her midforties, but looks older. She looks worn out.
“Who’s this?” I ask.
“Me,” she says quietly.
“Say what?” I make wide eyes.
“This is me. I am sleeping, dreaming myself here. The dreamer gave you the power of touch. It gave me the power of sight. It makes sense. Your hand has plagued you all of your life. My eyes have plagued me.
“In here.” Annabelle waves her hand through the flickering, floating TV image. “In the real waking world, I am blind. When I am here with you, or out there”—she makes a sweeping gesture—“in the library or the grocery store with you, I can see. This is how it all began. I’ve been dreaming you every night for the longest time. Little by little the Dreamer has been showing me bits and pieces of why.
“For a while I thought I was going crazy. I thought I had made you and the Dreamer up. A couple of days ago, that day in the library while you were having one of your attacks, I was taking a nap, dreaming you as usual, when I suddenly found myself transported into this body, the body you had dreamed up for me. I was amazed. The strange little things in my head, my idea about the dreaming planet, the idea that I was to lead you to… Anyway they didn’t feel like ideas anymore, they felt like truths. It was all coming true. In this body, this funky red hair and ridiculously perfect figure, I actually have eyes that work. For the first time in over thirty years I can actually see. Not blind vision, not images in my head, but sight like back when I was a little girl. For the first time I wasn’t merely dreaming you, viewing you from above like a security camera or God, I was looking at you, into your eyes, and seeing you as a sighted person would. God. I was looking into your eyes and you were looking back into mine.”
Annabelle stops and takes a deep breath. Her eyes glaze over and she loses herself for a moment.
“Annabelle?”
She snaps out of it and says, “Sorry, it is all a bit overwhelming. There is just so much to be done and not much time to get it all done.”
“How much time?”
“I am not sure. It’s hard to gauge human conceptions such as time. Everything we know exists within this single, unfinished dream, so who is to say yesterday happened or today is happening or tomorrow is going to happen. When I think about it… Forget it. We have to stay focused and that means getting you to me. Unfortunately, I can’t sleep twenty-four/seven; believe me, I’ve tried. My body is about eight hundred miles away in Mesa, Arizona. Once you get here we have to meet up with…” Annabelle pauses for a moment and her eyes roll up.
“Are you okay?” I reach out to put my hand on her shoulder.
She jumps out of reach and looks flat-out terrified, “I’m not allowed to tell you anymore.” Calming down and shaking her head, she says, “You must never touch me. You have to promise that you will never touch me or our final contact.”
“Final contact?”
“I can’t talk about him just yet, but you have to remember never to touch us. If you do, we die and everything falls apart.”
“Him?”
Annabelle sighs and looks flustered. “I’ve said way too much. All you need to know right now is that I am waiting for you in Arizona. When you get to me, never touch me. Never touch anyone I specifically tell you not to. Lastly, touch everyone else.”
I am confused. “Huh?”
“Your power is in your hand. You must touch every living thing you can between here and Arizona.”
“Unless you specifically tell me not to?”
“Exactly. Things will definitely get weirder before they get clearer. Just follow my lead and we will save the world.” Annabelle reaches her hand out and places it on my cheek. The sensation is tremendous (how long has it been since another human being has touched me with affection and caring?).
Is this a test? Didn’t she just get done telling me not to touch her? Ever? I jump away and shout, “I didn’t touch you!”
Annabelle puts her hand over her mouth and giggles. “In the waking world, Charles. When you get to Arizona and we begin our journey together, in the flesh. It’s okay to touch in dreams. Thank you for remembering anyways.”
Stupid.
“Are you ready?”
I nod.
“Okay, just close your eyes and try to clear your mind. I’m going to try and break our communion. In a few seconds you will be returned to your body.”
“But my body is dead.” Besides, I like this body. I don’t want my old body back.
“It better be. ,You have to be dead for things to work.” Annabelle says this like it is the most natural thing in the world.
“So I’m a zombie?”
“Sort of, but not like slow or hungry for brains or anything like that. You will be stronger and faster. You will blend in and through the power of a simple touch will be able to exterminate all of humanity.” She reaches out and takes my left hand. Slow, deliberate and deeply affecting, she massages my palm with her thumb. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Your hand will serve you. Close your eyes.”
I do.
Annabelle keeps on massaging my palm and her thumb’s circular motion quickens. She presses harder, deeper, and my mind becomes a funnel, a black hole, an exit.
You are everything.
* * *
I am dead and I have been to heaven.
Thirty-three and dead for our sins as I had hoped, but where is my father? Where does my god fit in to all of this? Where is that fundamental foundation upon which everything has been built?
Most importantly, why don’t I care?
Everything uprooted, changed, rearranged, and strangely, it feels good. Relief. Here but not really here. For real. Why doesn’t it hurt? And why did it hurt so much more to believe?
Now that my god is gone, the idea erased, replaced by another, I don’t quite understand, I miss the promise of heaven, of eternal reward, but I welcome the lack of order, I embrace the removal of expectation and I believe in Annabelle when she says it will all make sense eventually. This new perception, this implant, this antichoice of dreams upon dreams upon dreams isn’t too tough to swallow. It fits and makes about as much sense as any other ideology. I thought myself incapable of letting go of god, but it already seems that my old belief systems are nothing more than fading dreams, another sleeper yawning awake, welcoming the alien day with fresh eyes.
And natural as can be it’s like I was never born. It’s like all that came before, desperate, hopeless, undifferentiated, never existed. And even if it did exist, this new development proves that I was never meant to fit in. It proves that all of my worries and aches are unfounded, pointless, and given that the world—the old, harsh
, “use me up, spit me out” world—isn’t even real, I can’t help but prefer this fresh sense of consciousness.
I don’t have to play by humanity’s rules any longer. I don’t have to feel like shit anymore because I can’t play by the rules. I don’t have to die inside every time I think about my dad and my seizures and how incredibly disappointing I am. My hand—my beautiful, cursed hand—has compelled me to hate humanity and go against the grain because I must destroy it.
I am ready.
I hate sexuality and flesh and reproductive progress because I was designed to do so.
I am ready.
On my knees, the world exploding from my palm, bit by bit, piece by piece, layer by layer: dirt, rock, wood, bone.
I am ready.
Anti-flesh, Anti-brain.
I am ready.
All of a sudden I am a hero. Me: ugly, loser me, a champion of truth, a King Arthur in the making, out to restore balance, to temper human failings and bring peace to the land. God, and to think how much time I wasted feeling worthless. I was never meant to love. I was never meant to smile. And this is beautiful. In a world that means nothing, that is virtually nothing, I suddenly mean everything.
Chapter Six
The Fallen
Rocket ship down.
The errant pixel.
I am flying, a weightless dart through the digital void and after all I’ve seen none of this seems so remarkable. Big deal. Nothing is real anyhow. I suppose I am falling back to earth, but dispossessed of body it’s tough to discern direction. There’s definitely movement though. There’s definitely a sense of frenetic urgency, or I mean there would be if I cared. That is, if things were real enough to care about.
Was I ever up enough to fall down?
Is heaven or purgatory or that electronic holding chamber or wherever I just was, up?
Downward makes the most sense and after a moment of idiotic internalizing my hunch is validated. The digital blue gives way to familiar night sky. Not that I care.