Authors: Les Edgerton
It would work inversely, too. Through the small end of the telescope. A hundred years ago we believed the cell to be the smallest unit in creation. Then atoms were “proven” to exist and we had a smaller unit. Tomorrow, we will create something we will call patongs, which will be the building blocks of atoms, and the day after, a man named Luther in Germany will discover something he will egotistically call luterites, which will be the building blocks of patongs, and on and on. Remember the philosophical debate of the tortoise and the hare? That the hare could never catch the tortoise because he always had to reach half the distance between them? It is an impossibility—a goal that can never be reached. Infinity.
The same is true in the physical universe. For there to be infinity on the large end of the telescope, there has to be infinity on the small end. The hare will never catch the tortoise so long as both are moving. All he can do is run forever, another concept that completes the definition of infinity and makes it complete in its incompleteness. There can never be an end, and therefore there can never be a beginning. It is all a loop forming a circle. Within a circle. Within an infinite number of circles. And because infinity has no definition, by definition, in reality there are no circles either.
All this I worked out, years ago, in my first world, or at least the only world I have a present memory of, and I believe this to be true. All we are, all anything is, is a changing, swirling, mutating, moving, speeding, chameleoning, burgeoning, shrinking, expanding, standing, flowing, bursting, heating, gushing, freezing, living, and dying piece of something which is nothing. We have emotion—electrical impulses; we have memories—self-manufactured defenses against admitting futility; we have society with attendent mores—that is… This is where I have trouble. I can’t figure out why we have any of this unless there truly is a God who gives us these things so that we may perform in a manner that suits some purpose and has created societal laws that are nothing more than subsets of laws of physics. I come to a perfect circle, but yet I do not believe there is such a God. There is just no reason for any of it. There is no reason for me. There is no reason for you. There is no reason for snow to be on top of a mountain instead of in a desert. There is no reason for anything at all. There is no reason for anything simply because reason was the one thing the Creator held back, as His joke. There is no place for reason in existence, and so we strain in futile agony trying to invent something that is uninventable. And if the Creator is perfect, then how could He create something imperfect without destroying His own concept of Himself? Therefore, there is no Creator. Everything is just part of a gloppy mass that just happens to be there and does things and changes form.
But we have what we term a mind, and because of that we cannot view our environment with naked eyes but must clothe our surroundings, physical and ethereal. And that is what is different between you and I; I do not choose to share your vision. I do not see death as you do; I do not choose to see society as you do; I am not willing to react to the stimuli as you do, because I have chosen different materials for my visions.
I am here now and do not have my familiar body nor surroundings. So I will do the logical thing: I will wait for things to happen to me, and if things do not happen to me then I will cease to exist, or maybe I will change form again, this time to one that does not possess a memory of what I have been or experienced, and the whole process will begin anew. Perhaps I am an atom and shall be split; perhaps that is how we regenerate over and over for eons and only remember one or two lifetimes. Perhaps I am pure thought and imagine everything. Perhaps God is a thought, a giant nothingness that is larger than any imaginable universe and smaller than any imaginable atom, and I am a brief electrical impulse in that thought and do what other impulses do—create a world.
I am God.
There. I am on a riverbank. I’ve discovered a trick. I have only to close my eyes and imagine something else and I am there. I am seated and hold a fishing rod in my hand. On the end of the fishing line is a fishing plug. We are connected, yet apart. I do nothing. The breeze blows, and the hot sun makes the leaves of the old oak tree waxier and heavier. The plug strains against the current, trying to escape the leash that holds it. I imagine a large carp looking at it, his powerful tail jockeying himself into position against the same current. He wants to bite the plug but is afraid to do so. The carp is myself.
Then,
There is my mother again, and this time the baby on her lap is not a baby but a small boy. He looks to be five or six, and she is holding his head with a firm grip, forcing him to suckle her breast. He keeps turning his head, but with her superior strength she puts it back, mashing her nipple into his mouth past clenched lips. I wonder why he doesn’t eviscerate her nipple with his sturdy white teeth, but the thought must not occur to him. I think he will not think of doing that until it’s too late, one day at the end of his teens, standing by her open grave, regretting.
Now I know where I am. I am in my practice session. I am in a cell on death row and I have less than four hours before my execution. I can choose now to go on practicing or end the session. It is so clear to me that I am loathe to give it up. Perhaps sessions like this are a more perfect reality; when one has control of them as I do this one, I think they are better. I decide to go on with this one.
I want to see my father. I don’t remember him well and haven’t thought of him since he died, but having the power to go where I wish and see what I will has brought his face to mind again. I erase clean my thoughts and go where my dream will take me.
It works. There is my father. I want to try this new power. I think of the neighbor boy with his BB gun. I make him aim his weapon and ping! Out goes her eye. This is delicious. Another new power.
I am back to my father. I can go anywhere, do anything. I am from the planet Krypton.
He is seated at some sort of counter. The light is dim, but there seem to be others behind him and to each side. Tables—there are people sitting at tables and booths. At his counter, next to him, are even more people. They look odd, strange. What is it about them, their countenances? Surliness, that’s it; they all appear surly. There, one laughed, but his lip curls even so.
It’s a bar. It looks like Joe’s Tavern. It is, but the barmaids are different. They aren’t Beth and Jo, but they look much the same. It’s their tits. Joe likes to hire barmaids with heavy yellow hair and large breasts.
My father stands up. He talks to a man who has come up to him and thrust his face in his. I can’t hear the words, but it’s evident both are angry. My father takes a step back and lets fly with his fist, and the other man stumbles back under the blow and falls, striking his head on a table. He lies on the floor, and blood rushes from his nose and ears. Some men grab my father, and he shoves them away. He is boiling. He steps back to the bar and downs his glass in a long gulp and gestures to Joe who refills his glass from a whiskey bottle. I can see the bottle. It’s Jack Daniels. He drinks that glass too, in straight swallows, slams the glass down on the polished bar, reaches into his trouser pocket and withdraws some bills, which he throws onto the bar. The other man is still on the floor being tended by several others. My father barely glances at him as he turns and strides to the door of the tavern. The other men glance up at my father, and their look is the look of the dog whose master is cruel and who would like to bite him save for his fear. Their eyes shine with luminous white. He walks out, slams the door and is gone.
Curious, I follow, not bothering with the door but melting through the wall. I lost him in the gloaming. No—there he is, getting on a bicycle and starting to ride away, the front tire wobbling from side to side. I float along just behind him. I see he is headed home via the shortcut. I’ve gone this way many times. Everything looks familiar.
Just ahead on his path are three other people. I’m sober and so see them before my father does. He rides between them and they scatter, one falling to the ground. It’s a girl. The other two are men. My father stops his bicycle. He seems to know them and they him. They all seem drunk. They talk. I’m too far away to hear the words, but there is laughter, gesturing, slaps on the backs. The girl kisses each of them. They all leave together in a group, walking into the wood close by the tavern, leaving my father’s bicycle where he has dropped it. I seem to recognize the girl.
It’s Greta Carlisle! No, that can’t be. It must be a relative, her mother perhaps. The resemblance is marked. I follow, heart thumping. I couldn’t leave now, no matter what. They stop just ahead of me. No one can see me, but something makes me take shelter behind a large oak tree.
The girl begins to strip off her clothes. Nude, she lies down and one of the men unbuttons his trousers. They are going to fuck her. I fly straight up, right through the dead branches of the tree I was under, toward the stars. I go this way, then that. I keep seeing the man unbutton his trousers. It’s my father. I see him take out his penis, hold it in his hand like a weapon. It is so huge, enormous! I feel dizzy. I feel faint, confused. I fly here, there, above the wood, and all I can see is that engorged penis. It is everywhere I go, first in front of me, then behind, chasing me, pursuing me like a heat-seeking missile. I can’t outwit it; I can’t escape it. It follows me, its blind, red eye glaring, pulsing, throbbing, pursuing me whichever way I turn. It is there, everywhere. I want an ax, a sword, to destroy it, and then I have a sword in my hand, a great, heavy broadsword! All I did was think it! I start to swing it and then to stop and am unable to. The sword has a mind of its own; it is committed. I strain, use all my strength, but the arc is begun and I am helpless. It controls me. Slowly, ponderously, inevitably, my arms wield the awful blade in its arc, and nothing I do halts it. The edge meets the penis and slices through the organ, slowly, ponderously, inevitably. Blood spurts, and the soft red meat parts before the sharp steel. I can’t stop it. I scream. I scream and scream and scream.
My eyes close and I try to faint but it’s impossible and then I hear another scream that’s not my own and my eyes fly open. It’s my mother that’s screaming and I’m in her arms and my mouth is around her nipple and I can taste the copper of blood. I’ve bitten her nipple nearly off with my tiny white teeth. I’m six years old and I have a body that is firm. I don’t know how I know I’m six, but I know. I know, too, that this is the last time my mother will breast-feed me or rock me in that chair. I’m free. She screams again and this time succeeds in disengaging me from her torn breast. Blood runs and I smile and coo.
Foolish woman! If our parts had been reversed, I should have thrown her into the fireplace. Even in her pain she takes care not to drop me. Instead, she hurries me gently into the bedroom and lays me down in my crib. Yes, I still have a crib, with bars on the side, and I am in the first year of grade school. I have looked at bars every night for six years. I hate it. This will be my last night in this bed. I know this, too, but I can’t say how it is I know it.
My mother hurries out into the other room, clutching her wounded breast like a fallen bird, in both hands. The blood seeps over her fingers, and I hum a happy tune with no words. I can speak, even read, but I coo like I’m six months old and not six years old. I am so pleased. If I had a tail I would wag it.
As soon as she leaves the room, I climb out of my crib. I’m adept at doing this, having done so hundreds of times. I go into the sitting room, and my mother is nowhere in sight.
The front door opens, and my father appears at the threshold, clothes in disarray and stinking of booze. I can smell him from where I stand beside the couch. He doesn’t see me in his drunkenness. He bellows out my mother’s name, and she answers him. She’s in the bathroom. He staggers in that direction, and they talk, their voices muffled.
I’m shaking. I get down on my hands and knees behind the couch.
I feel bigger. My body is larger now, and I have different clothes on. How this happened, I’m not sure. It just happened. I’m nine years old.
My father emerges from the bathroom. He’s shouting, and I hear my mother’s sobs behind him. He commands me to appear, his voice ringing like a thousand spoons on a thousand tin plates in my head. I quiver like I am two hundred years old and hide my face in my dripping hands. He finds me, or his foot finds me, and he plays soccer.
Stop this experience, my mind says, but all I hear are my own screams and those of my mother. The only sounds my father makes as he goes about his work are short pants of breath and the muffled thump of his work boot as it booms against my ribs, the one sound punctuating the other.
I don’t want to play any longer—I sob, and my face is smeared with snot and blood and effluvium, and he keeps kicking me with his boot. My heart is breaking; this is my father whom I adore, my
daddy
, and he is hurting me and I beg him to stop, my voice tear-sodden and reedy, a thin, piping wail, and yet he continues, kicking and kicking and kicking, and I start to scream, for he is killing me, and it is one long piercing sound that wells up from where I do not know; it comes not from me, but it does, from somewhere I do not know about, and my scream goes on and on, frozen in an eternity, and at the very apex something clicks and the pain is gone, even though he has not stopped; no, it has not gone, it is there but it feels good, welcome, and I feel my mouth begin a huge, huge,
huge
grin, and each blow from his foot feels better and sweeter and
blessed,
and now I’m a man and I have to kiss my father, but he is nowhere, he is gone, and I am in a cell on death row and awake and on fire with my blood turned to ice and wet and shaking and there is a frothing on my lips and chin.
I have a choice now. I can come up from my experience and be safe in my cell, or I can go back and see what else is there.
I’m falling. I let myself go. I’m at the stage where I can still end it, and I know it, but the strongest force within me is curiosity, and therefore I will go on with this experience. In a while I won’t know I’m dreaming; it will all be real to me and no different than when I’m awake. When I’m in this state, half in and half out of the dream/experience, I don’t know which is the true world. I think both are reality and that there are even more kinds of reality than these. Time is a loop of wire that is endless and yet the same; our past, present, and future are on the same strand of wire, as are the dimensions and senses we are aware of, with others we are ignorant of. I clear my head of all matter and junk; I see it as debris floating about as in a space ship. I open a porthole and it’s all whisked away. The cabin of my mind gets empty and windy; nothing remains behind, and then I’m outside, no longer in my mind’s spaceship or any kind of container, but there is a cloud all about me, shapeless and white and sere, like the emanations of dry ice, and then a caprice. I know by that it is in my power to go anywhere I might choose, but it isn’t the part of my mind that I’m familiar with; it’s the underworld of my mind, the subconscious, the part that has been with me always but a part I’ve never been aware of. Like a malignant tumor, it’s been a part of me forever, knows me inside and out; it rules me, I think, but egocentrically I feel in control even though I know that to be ridiculous; I will continue to pretend.