Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) (9 page)

Living between worlds has its advantages. Money isn’t a problem. There is no hunger. Pain is only momentary. In addition, the golf course is never crowded and the weather outside is however you want it to be. Apparently, Giddeon simply sampled realities until he found one that fit our wishes at the time… and, there, we would be.

You know that country song, ‘
It’s Five O’clock, Somewhere
’? Over in the realm of inter-dimensional tourists, it was more along the lines of ‘
It’s Right-O’clock, Somewhere
’.

At first, I was only mildly curious about the alternate realities to which we seemed to have access. To be honest, I figured if I was in a coma then it really was just a dream like Giddeon first described it… none of it was ‘real’.

As time went on and I became more and more accustomed to my new existence, it was almost like I didn’t want to jinx it all by trying too hard to understand.

For some reason I was afraid that if I dug too deeply, or asked too many questions, Giddeon would go away and I would end up in darkness… all alone in a hospital room. The nearest thing I can relate my reluctance about trying to understand anything about the
how and why
of it all to, was… superstition. Like a player that was winning on the ball court, I was hesitant to change things. Pete Maravich (a basketball player from the sixties and seventies) had had his floppy grey socks that he wore during every game, and I had my acceptance of everything otherworldly.

That’s why, for months, I just went along with my existence as it was.

Finally, though, I realized that I wasn’t ‘winning’. That even though I was in a coma, it wasn’t just a long and complicated dream that was unfolding around me.

I began to understand that most likely I, with the help of Giddeon, was actually sampling different realities. That all of those different planes of existence did, in truth, exist and reflect off of each other into infinity like a hall of mirrors… or, like the never-ending facets of a diamond. Each similar, and yet, different, from the rest.

Real, but at the same time, not so real.

At least, not real enough.

The reality that I wanted most of all was my old reality.

The one where I held Melody’s hand and it fit perfectly into mine. Where she knew I was there. Where we could kiss, if we wanted to. Where we could talk and laugh and hear each other’s words. Where we could maybe go to a club, hold each other on the dance floor and sway to the music… sway to the music and feel intimate heat from our bodies pressed so closely together.

After dozens of rounds of golf, a ridiculous number of restaurant meals, hours and hours of jamming with Gid, communing with Boris and sporadically visiting Melody… I was ready to risk it.

I was ready for some answers.

__________

We had just finished playing golf. I had scored a 74 and Giddeon was somewhere in the 30’s. I no longer paid much attention to his game. We were in Clayton’s Coffee Shop on
Orange Avenue
… an old fifties/sixties style joint with real table-top juke boxes that you can flip through and select songs from. Giddeon was torn between Elvis and the Beatles.

“What do you think? Old swivel hips or the hipsters?”

“Beatles.”

“You sure? They’ve got ‘
Blue Suede Shoes
’ on here.”

He had taught me that one the other night.

“Yeah… time to move on.”

He punched some buttons and ‘
Day Tripper
’ began to play.

“I’ll teach you that lead when we get back.”

“Cool.” Our omelets arrived… of course no waitress was attached. The plates just appeared on the Formica. Gid had the Spinach, Tomato and Feta. I went with the Nado… tomato, Swiss cheese and avocado.

“Exactly how do you do that?” I queried.

“I told you, before. Everything has a field of probabilities… even omelets.”

He covered his in hot sauce and dug in.

“Could I do it?”

“You are doing it. I’m you, remember?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure… it’ll take a little practice, with your 5.7 percent and all.”

“I’m up to 5.7? When did I gain a tenth?”

Giddeon smiled. That day he looked more Brad Pitt than Kevin Bacon. “A while back. I was just waiting for the best time to tell you. I figured even par today… may as well have a little more good news to go with it.”

“I was two over.”

He shook his head. “That ball didn’t really go in the water on number 9… I was just messing with you. Fabricated a memory.”

“So my third shot…?”

“Was really your first.”

“Great. How do I know you haven’t been fabricating anything else… like my dream with Melody?”

“I’m not that good. Besides, I just learned how to do it. Seems like having you over here gives me a little more horsepower.” He grinned and ate some more
Tabasco
covered eggs.

“I see. So… ummm… when did you learn about the separate realities? How old were you… was I?”

He swallowed his bite. “Let’s see. I think I… you… we, were around 13 or so. Adolescence is so confusing. Especially when there’s no one to talk to. You’re not a very good listener, by the way.”

“Firewall, remember? Plus, I didn’t drink when I was 13.”

“That’s true. Anyway, you did read the encyclopedias, sometimes, and every now and then you listened to NPR science programs. ‘
Star Trek
’ helped… so did other old T.V. shows like ‘
Quantum Leap
’ and ‘
Stargate
’. Technically, ‘
Alice in Wonderland
’ and ‘
A Wrinkle in Time
’ deal with quantum physics.”

“Really? I loved both of those books.”

“Oh, yes… not as much as I did, though.” Giddeon almost had a wistful look to him, remembering my past. “Anyway, it was all about the same time I was becoming independent, so to speak. Taking on my own personality. I knew that we were the same, but also, that we were… different. I felt what you felt, and saw what you saw, but I had come to understand that we were joined in such a way that made communication difficult, to say the least.”

“Were you lonely?” I asked and took a bite of my omelet. It was delicious.

“I used to beg you to play with me when we were little.”

I nodded, trying to understand what that must have been like for him. Then, something occurred to me, “My mom said I had an invisible friend for about a year.”

“That was me,” he laughed. “Hard to play catch with yourself, though, isn’t it?”

I smiled, remembering how I threw a baseball in my room that shattered a mirror. Next, I asked, “Do you think everyone has their own ‘Giddeon’?”

“I think most do.”

“Even the… mentally challenged?”

He nodded, took another bite, swallowed it down and then continued, “Probably… look at savants. I think those are some of the few cases where the ‘subconscious’ can interface with the outside world. Then you have the people that can remember every day of their lives. Sounds an awful lot like ‘Giddeon’ territory.” He once again made his quotation marks in the air.

“Hmmm… can you remember every day?”

“Not as far back as they can… I was a late bloomer.”

I thought that over, and queried, “Do you think you have your own ‘Giddeon’?”

He stopped with his knife in mid-air, and looked genuinely surprised.

“I never thought about it. Maybe I do… you always were the intuitive one. You got most of the creativity, too, by the way.” He buttered some toast that had just appeared, and took a bite.

“I got most of the creativity? What are you talking about? Look at the way we play music… I suck.”

He swallowed his food, took a drink of orange juice, and then readied his fork for more eggs. “Technically, I’m far superior. I understand the theory and the progressions… but, all I’m mostly doing is spitting back out what I know. Ever notice I let you come up with the lyrics when we’re composing? Or, when you go off on a tangent with new combinations of chords, I just fill in behind you? Your 5.7 percent has some powerful good stuff, my friend. Don’t underestimate it.”

“Humph,” I grunted. “Anyway, as long as we’re at it, how come we drive everywhere we go, or walk… but, when you ‘sample’ realities, omelets, orange juice and beer just appear?”

“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask.” He paused, and put his fork down. “The quick answer is… because you want to. It helps you stay connected to the other world. Reality is all in the same place, so, it really isn’t necessary. Not necessary, at all.”

He reached out and finished his orange juice. Another one shimmered into our existence.

“When you say reality is all in the same place, you mean over here?”

“Over there, too.”

I thought that over for a moment. “Seems like I remember things being pretty far apart… I’ve driven across
Texas
a few times.”

Giddeon grinned. “Feels that way, doesn’t it? Let’s see… what’s the best way to explain this?” He thought for a few seconds with a finger to his lips. “Okay, just pretend you’re the first thing in the universe. Nothing else exists except you. You don’t really have any size, because size implies other reference points… so, you’re just a ‘point’, yourself.”

He had removed his index digit from his mouth in order to use that hand to gesture with alongside of his other hand. Gid obviously loved making quotation marks with his fingers in order to emphasize his points… no pun intended.

“Got it.” I responded.

“Now, you’re all alone. Nothing else exists except you. There is no time and there is no space, because in order to have those things you need distance… and, you can’t have distance without other points of reference.” He paused to make sure I was following. “Then, along comes a second point. That point has two choices… it can be in the same ‘place’ (again the finger marks) as your point, or it can be separate. That’s the only two places there are.”

I nodded. “So far, so good.”

“As you can see, there are now two places in the universe… where you are, and where the other point is, assuming it’s not in your ‘place’. No distance, yet, because there’s nothing to relate them to.”

“Okay.”

“Along comes a third point. That point now has three choices… it can be at your point’s position, the second point’s position, or, somewhere else.”

“Still no distance?” I queried.

Giddeon nodded his head and smiled. “That’s right… not yet. No way to measure. Now, imagine a fourth point joins the party. You get something akin to distance, but it’s fuzzy. Two points may appear like they’re right next to each other compared to the third one from your original ‘point’ of view. But, are they really? If you could move around them,” his hands were in the air trying to mimic the points and their motions, “you could see if that was actually ‘so’. In order to do this, you would be introducing a multitude of new positions, or points, into space.” He glanced off for a second, and then back. “You know… like the way two stars look really close together, but are really millions of light years apart because one is closer to you than the other?”

“Yeah, I think I see…”

“Suppose one is maybe 6 light years away, and the other one is on the other side of the galaxy. They look like they’re next to each other because they have no real size to you… they’re just points to your eyes. Their light is coming in close to parallel.” He paused, again, to make sure that sank in, and then went on, “Meanwhile, a star over laterally to these two guys may only be 8 light years from you, so it’s actually closer to the first star than the other one is… the two that look like they’re closer together are actually further apart. It becomes evident if you could get into a spaceship and travel around… time and distance.”

“Makes sense… geometry and frames of reference.”