Nonentity (16 page)

A green wall towered before the traveler and the dark-haired woman. The wall’s length and height appeared infinite. How could the two characters surmount such a barricade? The woman grinned at the traveler and turned to the wall. Green laser beams shot out of her eyes, etching a sizeable hole into the barrier. She stepped through the opening into a large field. She stopped a few feet away and motioned for her companion to join her.

The traveler strode through the wall, and became unhinged. Images of his Earthly self assaulted him. He saw each moment of his life with flawless clarity. Chief among his memories was the woman just beyond the wall. Her tragedy had fueled his journey. He was in his current spot because of her.

“You believed that I died on Earth,” the dark-haired woman said. “My reality never dies. Neither does yours. Step forward to explore its offerings.”

The wall’s hole expanded. The traveler fell into it and hit the ground. A thick forest encircled him. Rain pounded him, somehow bypassing the branches overhead. He raised his arms to the sky. The downpour ceased.

His beautiful companion was gone. Everything around him – the ground, trees, rocks, critters, etc. – was blue. The peculiar tint destabilized the traveler. He hovered above and outside the scene. He watched himself walking down the blue path of a forest growing denser with blue trees materializing out of nothing. The walking version of himself was also blue.

He heard the dark-haired little girl from the cabin of the hourglass: “Material objects are not concrete. I alter them at will.”

The little girl snapped her fingers. Every item in the forest, including the traveler, switched to green. With another snap of her fingers, everything returned to blue.

Suddenly the traveler was in the scene rather than out. He walked through the thickening forest, flanked to his right by the little girl. She was blue. To his left was the gigantic man from the cabin in the hourglass. Except for his green beard, the man and his ax were blue.

The green-bearded man said, “The void is near. Everything else is a mere illusion.”

The little girl glanced at the traveler with eyes of penetrating green. “Do you know why this burly fellow obsesses over illusions? He is an illusion! He is a product of fear. Smash the fear and its product disintegrates.”

She snapped her fingers; the green-bearded man and his ax vanished. She laughed. “Distinctions between reality and illusion dwindle. Perception is king. The whole mad universe is whatever we wish it to be. Witness the grandest dreams becoming true.”

The traveler had a vision of a wedding ceremony. He watched himself marrying the woman who brought him to the blue forest. He observed them making love on satin sheets in a room of gold. At climax, the fantasy bride peered at the observing traveler, her green eyes ushering him into the next vision:

Millions paraded in the streets. Marching bands played victorious numbers. Celebrants danced. Fireworks filled the air. Everything moved in perfect rhythm together. The crowd waved placards bearing phrases such as “The Regime is
Not
Permanent” and “Eternal Peace and Freedom For ALL.” The world had shifted….

The vision ended. Gone was the ubiquitous blue. So was the little girl. Cast out of the forest, the traveler stood at the golden gate of a castle several stories high. To each side of the structure were trees that shuffled about like animations.

“Wake up!” a voice hissed.

The traveler turned to his left and saw a cellmate from prison.

The cellmate said, “Remember me? I’m Howard Freel. Recall that I mentioned parallel universalism when we were in jail. This is what I could not say then: parallel universalism is a trick. It utilizes falsehoods to expose shades of truth. There are no parallel universes; one Nature encompasses all. Every being is real; there are no nonentities. The singular universe splits into three realms: one outside the void, the human realm; one on the void’s cusp, the hourglass; one within the void, our present location.”

“Jack wins in the end,” said another voice.

The traveler turned to his right and saw his second cellmate, a disheveled man with long, greasy hair. The man said, “Jack wins in the end. Jack wins in the end.”

Those five words echoed, even after the disheveled man disappeared. Freel also vanished. Thousands of birds soared from the surrounding trees. Flying toward the gate, they dissolved one by one. The gate opened. The traveler walked slowly toward the distant castle. Two familiars joined him as he strolled across the impeccable lawn: the little girl from the cabin and the green-bearded man with the ax. The trio arrived at ten steps leading to the castle’s front door. The green-bearded man went to the door and opened it. The traveler shot the little girl a confused expression.

She said, “Go inside alone. We shall meet again.”

The traveler went up the steps and through the door.

He entered a tremendous ballroom. Everything was blue again – the walls, ceiling, floor, people, tables, paintings, sculptures, etc. Each item moved in and out of focus. Hundreds mingled in the spacious room. The traveler felt woozy.

A tall lamp a couple yards away quickly transformed into a lanky, short-haired, big-lipped blue woman who lit a blue cigarette and blew perfectly rounded blue smoke rings out of her nose. Sneering at the traveler, she said, “I bet you’d like to turn this lamp on, you sick pervert.” She shrank into a blue candle.

The traveler turned and saw a man with a normal head but a leather chair and wheels for a body. Rolling across the floor, past the traveler, the man called out, “You bastards better stop sitting on me. I am not a piece of furniture. I am a man.  I …” Someone sat on the chair-man, who howled in pain.

The room spun. The traveler walked toward a door at the far side of the room. He tried to ignore the oddities around him. Somersaulting men and women morphed into humongous tires that crushed other people and objects. Many wrestled with each other, transforming into feral animals as they scrapped. Bullets whizzed. The distance to the door expanded. The omnipresent blue faded. An overpowering green light shot out from underneath the door. Finally reaching that door, the traveler threw it open and leapt into the next room.

He paused to catch his breath. He was in a receptionist’s lobby. Green light dominated the lobby. An elderly woman sat at a desk across from him, scribbling furiously on a notepad. Without looking up, she said, “Please sit down.”

The traveler looked to his right and saw a white couch at least forty feet long. At the near end of the couch sat a young man and woman, holding onto one another tightly. The traveler parked himself on the couch, several feet from the couple.

On the wall opposite him was an elevator with a cryptic floor listing: 1, 3, 4, 5, 74, ?, 3.14, 8, 8, *, 12, ***, 999, INFINITY IN REVERSE. Above the floor listing was a green-lettered sign:
The only way out is up
. “Infinity in reverse” was a recognizable phrase that frightened him.

“It’s okay, dear,” the young man on the couch said to the woman in his arms. “We’ve been through this before. I’m certain of it. Okay. Perhaps I’m not certain. We have been through this before, haven’t we?”

Sobbing, the woman said, “I don’t know. Nothing makes sense.”

The man smiled. “It all makes perfect sense.”

“How can you say that? Things are too unreal. I’m not even sure who I am. And who are you? This is terribly confusing.”

“You’re not sure who we are because we’ve become something else. We are what we were meant to be, as opposed to what we thought we were. You see?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t see.”

“Stop analyzing. Notice that guy on the couch with us? He’s eavesdropping on us, which diverts him from the enigmas of this environment. He was initially more confused than we are. By focusing on something else now, he ascends to the top floor without moving an inch.”

The woman stopped crying and laughed. “We have been through this before. That man on the couch proves it. We had a conversation with him. Remember?”

“Maybe not. What if our conversation with him actually occurs later in the story? Time is out of sync. We have been through this before … and we haven’t.”

The elevator doors opened. A scrawny, white-haired man stepped into the room. He waved at the young couple on the couch. The pair stood up and accompanied the old man into the elevator car. As the doors of the lift closed, the woman flashed a peace sign at the traveler and said, “Our realities should get together more often.”

The traveler sensed a new power with which he could twist the world to his whim. The elderly woman at the receptionist’s desk was oblivious to him as she scribbled on her notepad. He willed her dialogue into the script.

Eyeing him, the receptionist said, “Before entering our lobby, you were in our first room. Very few of the folks in there will make it into this room. Many were savages as humans, operating out of fear and bewilderment, harming others. So they keep mutating into other people and things. Their bewilderment has followed them here. Fear of themselves prevents them from choosing their own realities.”

The traveler attempted to compel more dialogue from the receptionist. She put a hand over her mouth and banged her head repeatedly against her desk.

The elevator doors opened. The scrawny, white-haired man stepped into the room. He gestured for the traveler to come into the lift. The traveler moved briskly into the elevator as the receptionist banged her head harder and harder against the desk. The old man joined the traveler, pressing a button marked “?” on the floor listing. The doors closed. The lift zoomed upward.

Looking at the traveler with vibrant green eyes, the scrawny man said, “I have known you from the very beginning.” There were no further words.

The doors opened. The old man motioned the traveler to exit. The traveler stepped out and glanced back at the elevator cart; the old man was gone. The doors closed.

The traveler was in an alleyway. A street lamp about three yards away poured blue light upon garbage strewn about. A frazzled man emerged from a dumpster at the edge of the lighting. The traveler recognized the man as Lukas Lambert, parallel universalist.

“My SRF-3! Where is it? Without it I’m done for,” said Lukas Lambert.

The dark-haired little girl from the cabin appeared with her twin, behind the parallel universalist. One twin said, “This man is a hoax.” The other said, “Yet, by accentuating the falsehoods, he helped our friend see the truth.”

“Shut up, you twerps!” said Lukas Lambert. He turned around and chased the little girls into the darkness beyond the blue lighting.

The elevator behind the traveler opened. The scrawny, white-haired man was absent. The traveler stepped back into the compartment. As the doors shut, he puzzled over which button to push. The doors reopened.

He left the elevator, returning to the receptionist’s lobby. Blue light had replaced the green. The young couple from earlier was on the couch. Randolph Doppelganger sat next to them. The elderly receptionist kept banging her head against her desk.

“I have written another book,” said a monotone Randolph Doppelganger. “It’s called
Internal Interpretations
. It reads like an illusion.”

The woman on the couch glared at the traveler. “Hey, don’t we know each other?”

“I think so,” the traveler said.

“Of course you know each other,” said the woman’s male counterpart.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“I’m not,” her companion said. “It just seems like we know him.”

Doppelganger stood up. “Do you even know yourselves?” He walked toward the elevator, disappearing before he reached it.

Eeriness set in. The receptionist kept banging away.

The elevator doors opened. The scrawny, white-haired man reentered the lobby. He placed a hand on the traveler’s shoulder, coaxing him into the elevator cart. As the doors closed, the woman on the couch called out, “Our realities should get together more often.”

The old man pressed the button for the top floor – INFINITY IN REVERSE. As the compartment shot skyward, he smiled at the traveler and said, “I wrote a poem for you. Maybe you’d like to hear it. I call it ‘Dreams and Nightmares’:

All the dreams and nightmares

You’ve suffered and enjoyed

All of them evaporate

As they’re swallowed by the void.

You had seen a man you know

Who would cast a spell of blue

Now you’ll take the device he’s worn

And discover that it is you.

This man you thought you knew

You only knew so well

It was just the nature of the guise

With which he cast his spell.

Past and present are now as one

And the future is with you everywhere

Time is now dead and gone

Or so says the small man of white hair.”

The old man faded into oblivion. An aroma of freshly blossomed roses overtook the elevator. The fragrance grew stronger, intoxicating the traveler. Green light flowed into the compartment.