Authors: George Earl Parker
He couldn’t believe he was thinking this stuff—it wasn’t the normal thing kids thought about, but then again he was no longer a normal kid. He was everywhere and nowhere. Traveling at the speed of thought, his thought stretched out like a map that owned this hidden territory, and just by squeezing it with his mind he could shape it into anything he wished.
“You are beginning to understand,” said a voice, and it was true, he was. He understood that time could not exist here in the normal sense; time had to be what you wanted it to be, backwards, forwards, or even none. Time was just an ingredient that matter used to measure itself by; time lived in the other world—the world of solid stuff.
“Where are you going?” asked the voice.
“Huh?” answered John.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” John volunteered. “Who are you?”
“I’m the random burst of energy you just passed through. Where are you going?”
“Anywhere but here I guess; I’ve got big problems!”
“Oh, you’re running away then?”
“What else do you do when you’re being pursued by trouble?”
“Well it’s a novel idea, but I’ve always found that facing up to it helps.”
“Oh, yeah—then I’d really have a problem; I’d be dead.”
“I didn’t say fight it, I said face up to it. Be flexible; find another way to defeat it.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No, that’s because you’re being pursued by ignorance, and to compensate you are fleeing
to
ignorance. Isn’t that strange?”
The whirlwind blowing through his mind began to subside, and a gentle breeze of reason wafted on the air. He felt giddy, the way he felt when he’d been spinning around in circles and suddenly stopped. Behind him a raging gorilla was beating its chest and screaming wildly, and before him a chimpanzee was entreating him to keep on running away as fast as he could.
“Is there another way?” he wondered.
“There’s always another way, but you must remain still if you wish it to find you.”
“You’ve got it the wrong way around,” John stated. “You mean wish to find
it
!”
“Who told you that?”
“Just about everyone.”
“Well, just about everyone is wrong; energy doesn’t work that way.”
“No? How does energy work?”
“Everything you see, everything you feel, everything you think, everything you hear, everything you say, is energy, and your only job is to balance it so that it can work through you.”
“I can’t even trust myself; how on earth could I trust energy that may turn negative?”
“Energy only becomes negative when it’s out of balance.”
“And how do I balance it?”
“Give in to it; stop fighting it and making it negative.”
“I don’t think I even know how to give in!”
“This is your first journey through the Subatomic World, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” John replied. “Before I just arrived; this time I traveled.”
“You must remember in the Subatomic World anything is possible; that is why you have to learn to focus. You are propelled by thought, but you must be guided by volition.”
“Volition! What’s volition?” John asked.
“It’s your will; it’s your aim. It must be like iron and you must never deviate from it, otherwise your thoughts will tumble down into chaos and confusion and you will be lost.”
“I’m lost now; I’ve deserted my friends, and run away. I’m a coward and a loser,” John whined.
“As the thought goes, so does the will.”
“Huh!” John grunted.
“The will is strong.” explained the voice. “If you think you are a coward and a loser, your volition will create the best coward and loser there ever was. If that is what you wish, let it be. On the other hand, if you wish to prove to your friends that you are a hero, saving them is the best way to do that.”
“Yeah, but how do I do that? It’s a gargantuan task.”
“One step at a time,” replied the voice. “Nothing is revealed beyond the next step. Propel yourself with thought and steer yourself with will. Open the vault, free your friends, and deal with the next step when you take it.”
“How do you know about the vault?”
“I see through your eyes,” answered the voice.
“How do you see through my eyes?”
“You are an element of the Subatomic World, and I am the energy that guides you,” said the voice.
“So you’re a part of me?”
“No. I am an extension,” the voice replied. “You need me, and I need you. Without me you would have perished the very first moment you were thrown here. But I could not allow that, because you are the only one who can remove the danger to our world.”
“Now you’re scaring me again.”
“One step at a time, remember. Now you must return to your world and help your friends,” the voice commanded. “And no more questions.”
John had to admit he had a million questions; in fact, his life had become one gigantic question. Initially, he had not wanted to believe that any of these incredible things were happening to him. Like an ostrich he had wanted to thrust his head in the sand. But now he realized he had entered into a strange new reality, one he had to come to terms with, because it wasn’t going away.
“I’m going back,” he stated, “I’m going to do what I need to do.” He imagined wanting something so badly that he couldn’t wait for it to happen. He thought about the night before Christmas and how he couldn’t wait for the next morning to arrive. He imagined that powerful feeling of wanting was his will, and he tried as hard as he could to conjure it up from deep within his memory.
To this feeling he added the strong desire of wanting to rescue Tex, Cal, and Kate, and he added to this concoction of thought and will an urgent need to return to the world as
himself
; but not to the location he’d disappeared from; he wanted to be outside the vault, so he could open the door.
As had happened before, everything began to whirl around in his mind, but this time he had willed it to happen; this time he was out of control by choice. Just as it had dissolved, the fabric of reality reappeared. Even though he had moved from the darkness of the Subatomic World to the darkness of the basement, he sensed that change had taken place. He stretched out his hand and grasped the huge metal wheel that opened the door, and he smiled.
It’s all a matter of trust
, he thought. He could trust his enemy to attack, and he could trust a friend to support him, but there was no virtue in any of that if he couldn’t trust himself to challenge every situation to become something more than just his own expectation.
CONFUSION
Tex, Cal, and Kate were stunned. John had just dissolved into a cloud of shining particles that dissipated into nothingness right in front of their eyes. The shock had frozen them into strange statues carved from disbelief. For the longest time no one spoke—they just stared at the bright white wall where John had dematerialized, and tried to comprehend the deep mystery.
“What the heck happened?” asked Tex in a shaky voice.
“He left!” Cal whispered uncertainly.
“Yeah! But how?” Kate wondered in astonishment.
None of them wanted to admit what they had seen, but there was no doubt it had happened. The proof was right in front of them: John had gone, and what rendered them speechless was they didn’t know whether to feel guilty, or amazed.
Tex knew he hadn’t hit John, and he had also never seen anyone punched so hard they exploded. He had to admit though, that he was so angry that if he had gotten his hands on John he would not have been responsible for what happened. He was conflicted; he felt culpable, but he wasn’t really sure why!
Kate had heard of spontaneous combustion. Sometimes, for absolutely no reason at all, people just exploded. There was no explanation for it, and nobody knew why it happened. But what if they were the reason why? What if John felt so threatened by them he just blew up? She would be guilty of murder; it made her sick to her stomach.
Cal didn’t have an explanation, although he did wonder about the strange things John had alluded to. He had referred to a spaceship and aliens in silver suits. This information gave Cal reason to believe he had just witnessed an alien abduction, which both stupefied and revolted him at the same time.
“I think I killed him!” Tex wailed miserably.
“No! You didn’t touch him,” Kate commiserated. “It was internal combustion.”
“You’re both wrong,” Cal cried. “He was absorbed by an intergalactic star cruiser, and he’s probably halfway to Pluto by now.” The three wild theories flew out into the room and hovered there just waiting to be shot down.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Tex thundered.
“Oh yeah?! More ridiculous than your killing him when you never even touched him?” Cal shot back.
“You’re both nuts,” Kate screamed. “He just blew up because he couldn’t take the stress from you guys ragging on him.”
“Okay! If he blew up, where’s all the blood and gore and bits and pieces?” Cal asked triumphantly.
“He’s got a point there,” Tex agreed.
“You obviously didn’t see the documentary I saw,” Kate explained. “When a body combusts spontaneously, it burns up from the inside out, and there’s only a little pile of ash left.”
“Well, I don’t see any little pile of ash,” said Cal. “Do you see a little pile of ash, Kate? How about you, Tex, do you see a little pile of ash?” He looked back and forth between the two of them as they silently stared at the floor. “Thank you! So by a process of elimination, my theory is the correct one,” he gloated.
“The ash could have blown away,” Tex offered idly.
“Or there could be only a microscopic amount left,” said Kate in her most self-assured tone.
Cal frowned, his idea was crazy, but theirs was crazier! “There’s no wind in here!” he declared.
“Well, there are no aliens either,” Tex countered with certainty.
“There are no aliens, period!” Kate added huffily.
“Oh, ‘there are no aliens period’, but people can explode for no reason at all?” Cal mocked. “Give me a break.”
“Why are you guys so hostile?” Kate asked.
“Because we’re not girls,” Cal said with a hint of malicious teasing.
“Hey, man, give her a break,” Tex fired back at him.
“Give her a break! How about I give you a break, in the face?” Cal snapped.
In a second the two guys were chest-to-chest, staring steely-eyed at one another.
“Any time you wanna try, bat boy,” Tex challenged.
“Oh, I’m sorry—did I get under that thin pigskin of yours?” Cal mocked.
Kate tried to get in between them, but there was no room. “Boys, this is about John; it’s not about you,” Kate said firmly, like a parent.
“Well, he started it,” Tex quipped, “but I’m gonna finish it.”
“I started it?” Cal laughed derisively. “You started it! And anytime you wanna try, give it your best shot.”
“Shut up!” Kate wailed, and dropping to her knees, she began sobbing uncontrollably.
“Now see what you’ve done?” Tex charged. “You made her cry.” Tex knelt down beside her and put his arm around her shoulder, but she shook him off. Cal, meanwhile, raised his arms to the heavens in frustration. He had finally run out of things to say.
A mechanical creaking sound suddenly emanated from the door, and the three of them froze in place, like tableaux from a cheesy school play. The noise amplified, and clicks and bangs ricocheted around the vault. With their hearts pounding in their chests, they watched the door slowly inch open until they saw a band of impenetrable inky darkness appear out beyond the doorjamb.
John was gone, and they were somehow responsible for his disappearance, a fact that wouldn’t go down too well with their abductors. They were excess baggage about to be thrown off the plane. Their last wish was simple: if it was their fate to be erased, that it should happen quickly and be done with as little pain as possible. They shared the blame equally; even though they had argued about it, they knew they had all played a part in their friend’s demise. Time stood still as they waited for someone to enter, and each of them held their breath, and prayed.
***
Doctor Leitz was sitting in front of the monitor watching the developments unfold down in the vault. As a physicist, an observer by nature, he was not an emotional person; in fact he never displayed any emotion at all. He didn’t know how.
But, when he saw the culmination of a lifetime’s work embodied in John’s disappearance, he was almost moved to tears. He had never imagined a feeling could sweep through his body with so much force. He suddenly felt like a dishrag that had been wrung out and hung up to dry.