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Stories / Stories / 
L. ´Frog´ Janas / Text 4 of 4 / Shifts
| The question is: how do you tell dream from reality? Note to all scientifically oriented reading this - yes, I know it's inaccurate. I know all about string theory, this just fit the story better. Don't email me with all the things that I erm, changed. I KNOW. Thanks. Also: I'm working on updating with all of the little typos and things edited out. This is the oldest story in my gallery and I don't really like it as much as I did when I wrote it. I'm trying to edit as I go, which is why it is taking such a long time. |
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←- Fresh Air | A Galactic Review -→
Oliver Horton sat in his little gray cubicle filing papers. Actually it wasn’t even his cubicle. It belonged to Sandy from P.R. and he was only allowed in it until she was done with her coffee break and only if he organized her complaint stack. Oliver liked the cubicle. Oliver as a small man and generally preferred small spaces that made him feel big over large open areas. Unfortunately, his permanent workspace was the Employee Technology Lounge, which was really just a giant empty room with 50 computers in it. Oliver much preferred Sandy’s cubicle. He sat sorting happily.
This, truly, was Oliver’s dream job. It required little to no thought, which was perfect, seeing as how Oliver had always been somewhat vague and was quite often what other people would call “not all there.” Besides, sorting papers and computer files was simple but necessary and Oliver liked to feel useful. Finally, Oliver really had no opportunities to be promoted in his, for lack of a better term, career field, which meant absolutely no pressure at all. It never even crossed Oliver’s mind that he could be fired.
Out of the corner of his eye, Oliver saw Sandy coming back down the hallway. He only had a few more cards to sort. Broken hardware– product complaint; customer on hold too long – service complaint, subcategory: phone support; no customer service desk in Atlanta location – customer stupidity…
“Oliver?” Sandy was here.
“Sorry, just organizing your cards for you. I though I would be done by the time you got back…”
“Why don’t you do Max’s desk next door? It’s his day off. You can come in here when I’m gone, not when I’m on a coffee break.”
“Well, y-you see, Sandy, I’ve only got one left. It’s a – it’s an-an onsite service complaint, our Minneapolis location.” He placed the card in the correct pile. “See? Now I’m done.”
“Why don’t you go do Max’s desk now?” Sandy asked exasperated.
“Oh, well, I actually get off at four. I get to leave. I’ll have to do Max’s pile tomorrow.” Oliver saw Sandy roll her eyes and mutter something. He didn’t know what.
Oliver left the little cubicle, his face flushed. He’d been stuttering in there. He needed to work on that. Somehow whenever he needed to speak, thoughts managed to come to him, but they came too fast or too slow so that his words came out jumbled and awkward. This thought stayed with Oliver until he reached the elevator.
Oliver liked the predictability of elevators and his journey home. Every day, the elevator operated in the exact same way. Oliver loved his routine. Once he was out of the office, he would take the number 47 bus until the first stop after the Chicago River, wait six minutes, then take the number 80 bus to the end of the line. Then he would walk one block north and two blocks east to his apartment building, take the elevator up to the eighteenth floor and enter his apartment. Oliver did this every day and this particular day was no exception.
Once inside his apartment, the comfortable routine was gone. Oliver dropped his keys in the tray by the door and went inside. What should he do now? He decided on television. It was a worthy time waster. Oliver grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV. He didn’t really know what he was watching. Leaving the television on, Oliver wandered into his room and changed into more comfortable clothes. Oliver lay down on his couch, only half aware of what he was watching. He was actually a little tired. Perhaps a nap… Oliver closed his eyes.
He found himself standing on a black sand beach. The sand felt rough, but good between his toes as he squished them around happily. Oliver had the feeling he’d been there before. Of course, that was silly. There were no black sand beaches in Chicago. Those were found near volcanoes.
Oliver turned around to find a massive volcano a mile or so in front of him. Oliver walked toward it. He wanted to climb it. He found a ranger station near the base of the volcano. Inside he found the walls stacked with climbing gear.
“Are you here to climb the volcano?” Oliver looked around for the source of the voice. Sandy was there holding a rope and a backpack in one hand and coffee in the other.
“Yes, I am thank you. How long will it take to climb?”
“The Puka-Rakai Volcano is the tallest volcano in the world. At its max point, it is 18 miles high. It should take you 80 hours or so to get to the top.”
“80 hours! What’s the fastest anyone’s ever done it?”
“47 hours, but they were in a hurry. Are you in a hurry?” Sandy asked. Oliver blinked.
“I suppose not.”
Oliver left Sandy in the ranger station with her coffee but took the climbing equipment. He stood at the base of the volcano and looked up. It didn’t look 18 miles high. Oliver looked over his shoulder at the nice, safe, sandy beach. Should he climb or stay there?
Oliver started putting on his climbing gear. In almost no time at all, he was on his way up the volcano. After no more than six minutes had passed, he stopped, realizing he had never put on a safety rope. Just then he began to fall. Fear flooded his body. From this height he would surely die—
Wait! Oliver suddenly understood! This was a dream. Oliver landed gracefully on the roof of the ranger station as though he had dropped merely a few inches. He was now filled with a sense of excitement and euphoria that came from a feeling of limitless possibilities. He was dreaming, but he knew he was dreaming so he could control what happened to him. There was a word for it – a lucid dream. He was living his own private fantasy that was completely within his control.
Oliver stood there unsure what to do. He slapped himself across the face to make sure he was dreaming. He felt nothing. Oliver’s face broke out into a gigantic smile as he took a running leap off of the rooftop and began to fly. He tilted his body upward and he soared up to the top of the volcano. He landed on the edge of the opening at the top. For a moment, Oliver was confused. The volcano was now no larger than he was. Once again he understood. The volcano wasn’t smaller. Oliver had become 18 miles tall.
Oliver wasn’t sure what to do next. He peered into the mouth of the volcano. Inside, there was liquid as thick as magma, but it was blue and translucent like water. Curious, Oliver did a swan dive into the substance below.
Oliver felt something scratching on his knee. His eyes fluttered open. A brown lab stared back at him from the foot of his bed. The dog lay down at his feet giving Oliver the cutest and most pathetic face he could muster. Oliver closed his eyes trying to go back into his dream. He wanted to know what was in that volcano… Duke, his dog, was now licking his foot. Oliver groaned and rolled over. Duke was hungry.
“Mary, can you please feed Duke?” Oliver asked groggily. There was no response. Oliver sat up. “Mary?” His wife wasn’t there. She’d gotten up without him. Oliver pulled himself out of bed and moved mechanically downstairs and into the kitchen. He fed the dog, put on a pot of coffee, and went upstairs to get dressed. When he got back downstairs, Mary was already there.
“Good morning, Oliver. I didn’t realize you were awake. I was about to come and get you. I already got the twins out of bed for school.”
“Duke is better than an alarm clock. He wakes me up at 7:08 every single day without fail. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he could read the clocks.”
“Yes, Duke is a good boy,” Mary cooed. “Oh, honey,” she said suddenly. “Is there any way you could pick up the kids from school today? I’m getting my hair done and they had to move me up to three thirty—”
“Just for today? Sure. I’m interviewing an executive at one but I should have the time to – good morning girls!” The twins sauntered in looking like a pair of pack mules with matching pink backpacks.
“Morning Dad,” they muttered in unison. Oliver grinned. The girls were never cheerful on Mondays. Oliver looked around.
“Mary, have you seen my briefcase?” She handed it to him. “Oh, thank you. Goodbye Darling, goodbye girls.”
“Bye Dad,” said the girls.
“Goodbye Oliver,” said Mary.
Oliver stepped out the door and into the garage and got into his new company BMW. A moment later, he was speeding along the road between his house and the highway where he knew the morning commuter traffic would begin.
Oliver reached the highway and traffic came to a standstill. Out of frustration, Oliver slumped against the steering wheel of his car, accidentally hitting his head on something hard. Oliver massaged his forehead. The one thing he hated was sitting in traffic on his way to work. He didn’t know why he did it day in and day out—
Except he didn’t do it day in and day out. Oliver took two buses each day to work. Something was wrong. Was he still dreaming? Oliver’s forehead was still throbbing. He couldn’t be dreaming, could he? But Oliver didn’t have a wife or kids or a dog or a BMW. He organized files in an office for a chain of department stores. Oliver looked around for some sign to prove that this was all a dream. He pinched himself, but all that did was make his arm hurt.
Perhaps he had gone insane. What if this really was his life? Could he have just forgotten? That sounded impossible. Oliver must still have been dreaming – which meant that he could change everything around him. He was having another lucid dream. Oliver closed his eyes and thought as hard as he could when I open my eyes I will be sitting on a park bench. However, when he opened his eyes, he was still sitting in traffic. Oliver began to panic. Maybe he did it wrong. Oliver looked over his shoulder. Sometimes that changed his dreams. There was just an entrance ramp and a highway behind him. Oliver didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even really know where he was going. Where was this job he was supposed to go to? This wasn’t his life! He knew he needed to make a decision. He couldn’t just sit in traffic hoping this world would go away. He needed to know what was going on.
Praying that there were no policeman around and that he wouldn’t cause an accident, Oliver put the car into reverse and made a three point turn on the entrance ramp, driving the wrong way back towards the empty road. He wasn’t sure exactly where he was going, but he knew he had to get out of that line of cars. That couldn’t have been the answer. Oliver kept driving. He could see the Chicago skyline ahead of him in the direction the highway had been facing. At the very least, this familiar sight began to calm him. Oliver licked his lips. He wasn’t good at thinking or making decisions, but he had the thought that he should drive to his home, his real home, his apartment on the 18th floor.
Oliver didn’t have the slightest clue how to get to his apartment from where he was. It took him about an hour to find his way into the city. From there, it took him half an hour to drive about two miles and he decided to give up on the car. It took Oliver another half an hour to find a place to park and about ten minutes to find a bus stop that was on the route of the number 47 bus. Oliver took the 47 bus past the river, waited six minutes, and took the number 80 bus to the end of the line. He then walked one block north and two blocks east to his apartment building and nervously took the elevator up to the 18th floor.
Oliver walked up to the door to his apartment. He didn’t have a key. Oliver tried the handle, but the door was locked. This was stupid; he spent over two hours finding an apartment he didn’t have the key to. Oliver knocked on the door. He heard footsteps. A girl no older than twenty opened the door looking confused and half asleep.
“Is my rent due or something?” she asked. Oliver took a step backwards.
“No. No, no, I-I was just, um, j-just…” The girl stared at him. “Wrong apartment. Yes, that’s it, this is the wrong apartment, I-I was looking for, for that one, yes…” Oliver scurried down the hallway and waited for the girl to close the door. Oliver fell backwards into the wall and slid down so that he was sitting it a sort of upright fetal position.
What should he do now? He really must be insane. What other explanation was there? Oliver thought, which was not something he was very adept at doing. Then Oliver had an idea. What if the life he remembered was merely his life in the past? Something must have happened to him that made him forget his life after that day in the office. He must have grown old, got married, got a new job and a new life. Perhaps he was in an accident and had a concussion that made him forget everything since he fell asleep on that couch. This must be reality. It had to be. Which meant Oliver was either incapacitated or insane.
Oliver was not very fond of either option. What was he to do? He had a new life and no recollection of getting it. Maybe he should see a doctor or a therapist. A doctor could tell him if he had a concussion. Of course, otherwise they would be certain to think he was insane. They might be right. Maybe he should be locked up…
Oliver was through thinking. It was making his head spin. He stood up and stumbled over to the elevator and pushed the down button. It made him feel like he was stepping into an elevator that would take him down to the depths of hell or falling into insanity. Oliver decided that there were far too many colloquialisms where down meant bad or crazy or evil. The elevator was mocking him. Oliver came out of the elevator and simply left through the front door of his apartment building, but the feeling stuck.
Oliver walked two blocks west and one block south to the bus stop. There was a young woman sitting there, but otherwise the whole area seemed fairly deserted, which was unusual at this time of day in the city. Oliver stepped up to look at the sign to see if there was a bus that went by a hospital. He found one, the number 62. Oliver sat on the bench that was there next to the woman to wait for the bus.
“Are you alright, sir?” Oliver looked up. The woman had spoken to him.
“Oh, hello, I-I just, does something appear to be wrong? Do I have a bump on my head, or, or something?”
“No,” the woman said, looking bemused. “You just look upset and I was wondering if there is something I can do.”
“Do you know me?” Oliver asked hopefully.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t live here anyway. I’m visiting a friend, I live in Boston…”
“Oh, well, thank you for your concern, I suppose. I am upset but I don’t think there’s anything you can do.” Oliver looked at the woman. “Actually, can you pinch me? That might help.” The woman looked even more bewildered than before but seeing Oliver’s insistent face, she pinched him lightly on the arm. Unfortunately for Oliver it hurt. “I guess I’m still not dreaming…” Oliver muttered.
The woman, who had been looking like she had regretted her decision to talk to Oliver, now seemed interested. “What did you just say?” she asked him.
“I guess I’m still not dreaming,” he repeated.
“Did you hope you were dreaming, or think you were dreaming?” the woman asked. Oliver stared at her.
“Both I guess.” The woman stared at him insistently as if expecting him to say something more and so Oliver launched into the story of what he thought had happened. The woman seemed to be incredibly excited by the time he was done, though Oliver couldn’t comprehend why.
“I don’t know if you believe in fate,” the woman began, “but I believe there was a reason we met here today. I think I may be able to tell you what is happening to you and you may have just helped me prove my life’s work. First, we might have to get on the bus.” Oliver looked up. The bus had just arrived. The woman was already walking up the steps. Oliver quickly clambered up the steps but stopped. He had no money to pay for the bus ride.
“Wait!” Oliver cried after the woman. She turned around. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Mallory Baird.”
“Mallory. I’m sorry to ask you this, but I have no money to get on the bus. Could I—”
“Oh, of course!” Mallory handed him a dollar and the bus driver stopped glaring at him. “That story wasn’t just a ruse to get me to lend you a dollar, was it?” she said smiling.
The two of them sat down next to each other as far away from listening ears as they could find. They both turned in to talk to each other at once but neither of them said anything for a moment.
“So?” asked Oliver finally. “What do you think is going on?”
“Have you ever heard of string theory?” asked Mallory.
“I’ve heard of it…” Oliver said. Music was never his best subject.
“Well, at its most basic it is a way of describing the universe. I’m a physicist. I work primarily with theoretical physics and I specialize in string theory.” Science was also not Oliver’s best subject. Come to think of it, Oliver didn’t really have many good subjects. “What we believe is that strings make up the universe. They are little one dimensional strings of energy that can be open, like a line, or closed, like a loop.”
Oliver tried hard to picture this. A picture of a noodle and a bracelet swam into his head. Mallory was getting out a piece of paper and a pen from her briefcase. She drew two stick figures on the paper.
“You see how the people in my drawing are stuck on the page? They are stuck in two dimensional space even though we live in a three dimensional world.” Oliver nodded. “What’s neat about string theory is that it allows for more than three dimensions even though we cannot see them. It’s as if we are stuck on a piece of paper when there could be other pieces out there.”
Oliver tried to picture this as well. He saw a stack of paper in his mind’s eye. On each piece of paper in the pile he tried to picture a movie playing. He made the stack of paper into a little stack of universes before him.
“Are you saying that it’s possible that there are alternate universes?” Oliver asked.
“Or something like that. Obviously, string theory is very complex, but you don’t need to know the details.”
“What does that have to do with me?” Oliver was very confused. He was used to being confused, so he accepted that Mallory would get around to explaining it eventually.
“I’ll explain in a moment. Try to bear with me. As far as string theory goes, the reason we believe all of this is because of gravity. There four main forces in the universe and gravity is one of them. What scientists have realized is that gravity is a lot weaker than the others.”
“Gravity is a weaker force?”
“Yes. Think about it. You, with all the strength in your legs, can jump off the ground pulling against the gravity of the entire earth!” Oliver looked down at his feet and lifted them off the floor as if testing this theory. “We think gravity is on a closed string,” (Oliver thought of the bracelet again) “while other forces are open,” (Oliver thought of the noodle) “and open strings would use their open ends to attach to this universe.”
Oliver thought very hard about this one. He envisioned a noodle with one end stuck to a piece of paper with a bracelet nearby.
“You see, because gravity is not stuck to this universe, it can visit other dimensions and it is spread over a much wider universe. That is why it seems weak.”
“I think I understand!” Oliver said excitedly. Perhaps he was good at science. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, I think brainwaves might be like gravity. They aren’t stuck in this universe in three dimensions; and I think dreams are the proof." Mallory looked him in the eye. “How do you define a dream? How do you know when you’re dreaming?” Oliver thought.
“You know when you’re dreaming when you’re asleep. It’s like being awake, but you’re not. You’re asleep.” Mallory nodded.
“But how can you which is the dream and which is reality?” She stared at him. “This is what you’re concerned about! Come on!”
“Well, reality is always the same,” Oliver said slowly. “Dreams are different each night but every day you wake up and your life is the same. Except mine isn’t.”
“Exactly! Which is why I believe we should redefine dreams. I think dreams are not what we see when we sleep. Dreams are shifts in consciousness. When we fall asleep we shift to a new world, possible different dimensions and other universes, I’m not sure. When we wake up we return to the old world. But you haven’t! You broke the cycle and I think you may be experiencing a shift in consciousness. You have become aware of these other worlds and are shifting between them without returning to the one you are familiar with! You are the proof to my theory!”
Oliver sat, baffled by what he was hearing. Mallory “Why is this happening?” he asked. “Why am I visiting these other worlds when that has never happened before?” Mallory just shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s probably just an anomaly or a glitch of some sort. What matters what this means to the way we understand the world. I’m telling you, this was fate that I found you. What will the scientific community say when they hear your story? We’ll both be famous!”
“Whatever it is you want me to prove we’ll have to do it before I fall asleep and start dreaming again or, I guess before I ‘shift my consciousness’ again.” Mallory’s smile faded slowly.
“Of course. The irony of fate.” She looked away. Oliver still had questions.
“Mallory, if I was never really dreaming, how come I can control my dreams?” Oliver asked.
“Different world, different laws of physics. I don’t know exactly.”
“And how come I couldn’t feel pain there, but here I can?”
“That is an interesting question,” said Mallory, looking more cheerful. “Pain and senses are all controlled by your brain. They can be fooled. When you thought you were dreaming, you expected that you wouldn’t be able to feel pain so you didn’t. Here, you thought the world was reality, so you expected the sensation.” Oliver pinched himself. It still hurt. He looked at her – a challenge to her theory. “You’ve already been hurt in this world. Your brain works on a much deeper level than merely thinking ‘hey brain, don’t feel this.’ The subconscious is a fascinating thing…” Mallory continued to talk. Oliver was no longer fully listening. The things she was saying didn’t seem to apply to him.
Suddenly Mallory stopped speaking. She was standing up, leaving. When she realized Oliver wasn’t following, Mallory stopped. The bus driver looked back, irritated that she wasn’t getting off the bus.
“This is the stop,” she said. “Aren’t you coming with me?” Oliver froze. She wanted him for reasons of her own. The universe as he knew it was falling apart. He couldn’t go, could he? The bus began moving again. “No, wait, this is my stop!” Mallory shouted behind her. “Why aren’t you coming?”
Oliver didn’t know what to say. How do you explain something you know in your gut? Why couldn’t he tell her why something was waiting for him somewhere else?
Mallory just stared back at him, disbelieving. The bus driver was going to drive off again and they both knew it. She quickly turned and disappeared down the steps and out the door.
Oliver still didn’t know what to do. The bus was moving again and now he didn’t know where he was going. Oliver knew that they had passed the hospital a long time ago, but now he was sure that wasn’t where he belonged. All this thinking was making him more confused. All he needed was a moment to compose himself. Oliver closed his eyes and began breathing deeply, feeling the rhythm of the bus and listening to the soft hum of the engine.
Oliver opened his eyes again. He was now standing on a mountain part of a gigantic mountain range stretching as far as the eye could see. All around there were clouds that were a shade of orange as vivid as the rock beneath him. The wind blew and he was forced to shield his eyes from dust being blown about. Oliver immediately took on a great feeling of solitude on the endless mountain range. There was not a living thing in sight, neither plant nor animal nor human. Oliver was grateful for the wind for breaking the silence.
He decided to risk looking down. The valleys between the peaks never seemed to end so that he was staring into an abyss, seeing only the side of the mountain and blackness – and, was that—? Yes, there were stars. Between the mountains in the void there were tiny points of light coming from far below. This realization frightened Oliver and he looked back up at the mountains jutting into the discolored sky. Oliver turned all the way around once. In every direction, all he could see were mountains, most of them taller than the one he was standing on.
The wind began to die down and once again Oliver felt that gut-wrenching feeling of being completely alone in the mountain range. Oliver had never been fond of open areas. He would much rather have jumped to a universe full of small closets.
“Hello?” Oliver’s voice sounded louder than usual in the silence, though it didn’t echo. He didn’t know what had made him speak to nothingness. Did he expect it to answer? It seemed to him that he had always known about the worlds of his dreams without being told, even when they were just ‘dreams.’ Just before, he’d known his wife and his dog and his children. Did he know the hills would answer?
“Hello. I am Magari. Who are you?” said a voice. It was a rich, genderless voice, booming and echoing all around him. Oliver very much wished this world was filled with closets.
“I-I’m Oliver. Oliver Hort-Horton. I’m sorry but who are you?”
“I am Magari,” the voice said. “I am the voice of these rocks. I speak for them. You, Oliver Horton, who do you speak for?” Oliver blinked, puzzled.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well I suggest you figure that out,” said the voice. “In the meantime, would you mind telling me how it is that you appeared here?”
Once again Oliver recounted the events leading up to his appearance on the mountaintop. He felt rather silly talking to the hills while they weren’t talking back. He paused at the end of his tale, hoping to hear some sort of response.
“And what is it that you plan on doing now Oliver Horton?” asked the hills.
“I plan on finding my way home – to my own universe!”
“Why?” asked Magari. “Is your universe better than the ones you have since encountered?”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Exactly. They might even be better. So why then would you want to return home?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is something else I suggest you figure out,” said the voice.
“It’s because that’s where I belong! That’s why I want to go home, ok?” said Oliver.
“Do you believe that? Do you believe that you belong in the world you grew up in? When you were there, did you feel like that was where you belonged?” Oliver didn’t say anything. “We are always afraid of the unknown. I want you to think. Why is it that you want to return home – because it is familiar or because that is where you really want to be?”
“What are you suggesting, then, eh? I stay here forever? I can’t just keep switching lives every time I fall asleep or wake up or change my consciousness or whatever it is I’m doing. What do you want from me?” Oliver stood, exasperated on the mountaintop, but it didn’t respond. “Why won’t you answer me?” he hollered.
“Because you are not asking the right question,” the voice echoed around him. “Have you wondered why this is happening to you?” asked the hills after a moment.
“Of course I’ve wondered. I have no idea why.”
“The scientist told you that your thoughts could travel into other worlds, other dimensions. Have they always been able to do that?” Magari asked.
“I guess so. It wouldn’t surprise me if half of my brainwaves were in another universe. I never seem to have enough of them when I need them.”
“Were you aware that they could do this?”
“No.”
“Are you aware of this now?”
“Yes.”
“So the unconscious has come into your conscious mind!” roared Magari triumphantly. The pebbles on the mountain quaked below him.
“I don’t understand.”
“You are in control. You have brought together the unconscious and the conscious halves of your brain! You are in control.
“But how?”
“By expanding your mind in dreaming, even though it was unintentional, you have become aware of your unconscious. Because you are aware of your unconscious you can control what has been happening all along.”
“But what does that mean?” asked Oliver, more exasperated than ever.
Magari refused to answer his question. Oliver stared up into the orange clouds, now moving quickly in the wind which had picked up again. Oliver sat down on the rather uncomfortable rocks. He picked up a pebble off the ground and cast it into the abyss, contentedly watching it bounce down the never-ending mountainside and into the blackness. What did Magari mean by saying he could “control what has been happening all along”?
He decided to try again. “What am I in control of?” There was no answer. “What has been happening all along?” Magari didn’t answer.
Oliver thought for a moment. All along he had been able to ‘shift his consciousness’ beyond the dimensions of his own universe. Was he in control of that?
“What now?” asked Oliver.
“Try to shift,” answered Magari.
Oliver closed his eyes and tried to cease all thought. His mind was expanding, changing, moving. He opened his eyes.
Oliver’s eyes didn’t focus well at first. Everything was so close, even the walls. He backed up before he hit another wall with something very hard sticking out of it. He turned around it was a doorknob. He was in a closet. Oliver smiled. He could do better than that. He closed his eyes once more.
Before Oliver even opened his eyes he knew he had gone. Oliver opened his eyes but that made no difference. He could no longer see. While his eyes had been closed, the blackness of his eyelids had become nothingness; his brain stopped receiving signals from his eyes. For a moment this frightened Oliver. Had he really become blind, or was this a part of this world? Where was he? The smell was familiar – like the air just after a storm. The air felt humid, too. Was it daytime or nighttime? He could hear birds – perhaps it was morning or dusk. Oliver didn’t trust himself to move. Instead he closed his eyes again.
He could see again but the signals he was seeing didn’t make sense to him. Oliver blinked. He was disoriented which Oliver could tell would quickly turn into a headache. He forced his eyes open because of the fascination he held in what he saw around him. He had stumbled into a world with four spatial dimensions. It wasn’t natural, his body couldn’t respond to them. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, Oliver wasn’t sure if he was in three dimensions or six. Something had happened. By one way or another, he had managed to experience two worlds at once. He could see, feel, hear, and smell both places at the same time though his physical body was in neither place. He was still somehow present, his mind receiving signals from a body that wasn’t there. Intrigued, Oliver shifted again.
Two worlds again, but they were two different worlds than he had just seen. He could do better. He needed to focus. He was in control.
There were more dimensions than he could count. The feeling was amazing. His senses were over-stimulated while Oliver absorbed the worlds around him. There were more places to explore. He could tell. More worlds to experience. He could go further.
Total openness. He was one with the universe, the real universe, the whole universe. Complete freedom. Every dimension was uncovered, every layer was reconnected in a way Oliver would never have believed possible. Utter euphoria. He had never really lived a day in his life until now. Absolute omniscience. He’d had such a limited view of the world. He’d seen so little…
Oliver knew he was never going back. Magari had asked him why he wanted to go home. Now he had discovered the unknown. He was now aware of not only the universe but of his unconscious mind. Absolute omniscience. Utter euphoria. Complete freedom. Total openness. And he was never going back.
←- Fresh Air | A Galactic Review -→
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'Shifts':
• Created by:
L. ´Frog´ Janas• Copyright: ©L. ´Frog´ Janas. All rights reserved!
• Keywords: Dimension, Universe, String, Theory, Science, Oliver, Horton, Dreams, Shifts, Reality
• Views: 195
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