Authors: George Earl Parker
“Who’s me?” he mumbled, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible.
“I am,” said the voice, which boomed like a thunderclap.
This voice isn’t mine
, John thought, so he spoke back to it.
“Hey, me?” he ventured, “Where am I?”
“Well...where are any of us really?” came the enigmatic reply.
“I’ve just been blown up,” he whispered. “Is this heaven or hell?”
“It’s neither,” said the voice, as a tiny mouse appeared in a pool of light before his eyes, standing on its hind feet and holding its tail in the crook of its arm. “It’s the Subatomic World.”
“The Subatomic World!” cried John, “That sounds a lot like hell.”
The mouse leaned closer, and peered at him intently. “Listen,” it ventured, “it appears that you have two personas—one public and the other private. I like the private though; it’s more complex, and therefore more interesting. Would you mind awfully if I addressed myself to that aspect? I feel it may have more to teach me.”
“I can’t teach you anything.” John said irritably. “Just get me out of here.”
The mouse gazed at him intently, and idly brushed its whiskers. “That’s not very polite, is it?”
John quickly began to rethink his outburst, he had no idea where he was, and he was conversing with a mouse. “No it’s not,” he said remorsefully. “I apologize. Do you have a name?”
“Of course,” came the reply, “don’t you?”
“Yes, mine’s John. What’s yours?” The pool of light and the mouse disappeared into silence for a moment and then suddenly there was music, lights, lasers, and a huge projection screen featuring the most outlandish singer he’d ever seen. He strutted back and forth across a stage, pointing and gesticulating as he sang.
I am the Master of the Perfect Word
of shadows and of light,
I am the singer of songs unheard
the bringer of delight,
I am secrets never known
that dreams nor time have said,
I am the fool inside your clothes
the thoughts inside your head.
John could have sworn he was still lying down in the dark, but at the same time he was watching a rock concert with thousands of other people.
“I am a song…” said the Master, and suddenly everything disappeared and John saw the crazy rock star sitting before him in a meditative pose, chanting: “…in my most perfect form.”
“A song! How can you be a song?”
“A song is the most perfect use of vocabulary; a few very well-chosen words dance on waves of music, invoking emotional and intellectual truth. Could any use of words be better than that?”
“I just don’t see how you can be a song!” John exclaimed dourly.
“You think a lot don’t you?” said the Master. “Does anything ever become of those thoughts?”
“Why does everything keep changing here?” John asked as the Master transformed back to the timid mouse.
“In the Subatomic World we can become anything. Change is the only constant. Past and future don’t exist, there is only now.”
“I could never change like that,” John said, “It’s impossible in my world; everything is always the same: boring!”
“This is your first inter-dimensional journey, isn’t it?! I don’t think it’s ever been done before, but we always knew it was possible; anything is possible in the Subatomic World.”
“What are you talking about? I can’t understand a single word you say. I just want to go home. How far away from the earth am I?”
“Well let me see!” The mouse feigned calculation while John watched impatiently. “Why…you’re just a thought away; how much farther away can you get from anywhere?”
John tried to gather himself together mentally. He thought very hard, and the more he thought the more he realized that his situation was so insane, he had no words to describe it.
“What is happening to me?” he pleaded. “This is all very scary.”
“Well, from what I can gather,” the mouse replied, “you had a particle collision.”
“A particle collision!” exclaimed John. “What’s that?”
“It’s the precursor to altering the structure of matter, the gateway to the subatomic world.”
“I must be dead,” John said, “I have to be dead.”
“No, not dead,” said the mouse as he turned into a toad from which John cringed reflexively. “In the Subatomic World we change from one state to another all of the time, especially when we’re being watched!”
John was wordless; he simply stared at the ugly toad.
“Yes, there’s something about an audience that just makes time stand still,” the toad said with a croak, “Don’t you think?
John must have been in shock, because he just couldn’t bring himself to respond.
“Don’t you feel time has stopped for you, and is moving backwards?”
“Time can’t stop!” he stammered, bursting back to life full of righteous indignation. “Let alone move backwards!”
“Perhaps moving backward is an inappropriate metaphor. The truth of the matter is that you were propelled here faster than the speed of light, so you actually arrived here before you left the last place you were in!”
“But nothing moves faster than light!” John declared.
“Oh, yes it does,” said the toad with authority, “you came here much faster than the speed of light; you came here at the speed of thought.”
John pondered the absolute ridiculousness of this whole scenario for a moment before he began feeling strange. It was as if the whole conversation had taken his consciousness to the edge of a whirlpool and pushed it in, and now he was beginning to drown. He found himself gasping hopelessly for the air of sanity, and then suddenly, everything went black.
DISCOMBOBULATION
It was a beautiful sunset
, he thought as he opened his eyes and stared at the golden orb disappearing over the horizon. He wondered why he’d never seen it from this viewpoint before. He seemed to be high, high up. The houses of the town were laid out in rows below, and hundreds and hundreds of leafy trees were scattered between them; it really was a very picturesque scene.
He wondered where on earth he could be; his cheek was lying on a cold, rough surface. He looked down:
roof
tiles
, he realized, just as he began to slip backwards very slowly.
ROOF TILES
! he thought. His fingers instinctively clung to the edge of the slippery tile closest to his hand, but it was loose. It dislodged, clattered past him and fell into a long silence before he heard it smash to pieces far below.
What on earth was he doing on a roof? He was scared, very scared. The sun had quickly disappeared and it was now dark. He had no idea which roof he was on, or why. He only knew he was perched at a precarious forty-five degree angle, and gravity was busily tugging at his frame.
He slid again, and he felt his feet suspended in space, but as he was about to slip off completely, he gripped the edge of a sturdy-looking tile with one hand and clung to it for dear life. Miraculously, he spun around until his whole body was lying in the gutter. Below him he could make out the dim features of the schoolyard.
Down there, that’s where I want to be; standing on my own two feet
, he thought, just as gravity won the tug of war, pulled him over the edge, and sent him hurtling to the ground.
Instead of smashing into the concrete below, however, he fell into a void—a void that supported him, lifted, and transformed him, and before he knew what had happened, he found himself standing in the schoolyard staring up at the roof. He was dumbfounded; he tried looking back on the experience, but it just felt oddly—normal!
“Who’s there?” a voice rang out, and the beam of a flashlight danced over the wall. John scrambled off into the shadows and watched as a security guard appeared. “I know you’re there,” he shouted, “I saw you.” The guard waved his light around and listened intently until he saw the shattered roof tile lying on the ground. He took a long look up at the roof, shone his beam up there and paused for a moment, before shrugging his shoulders, shaking his head, and walking away.
***
Outside the window the birds were busy composing a dawn chorus, and John was lying fast asleep in his bed. Opening his eyes, he yawned and stretched—then he remembered yesterday. Was it yesterday, or was it all just a bad nightmare? It had started out real, he knew that, but then it deteriorated into the most complete nonsense he’d ever experienced, and he knew without a doubt that if he tried explaining it to anyone they would think he was making it up.
He decided that it must have been a nightmare, and as a precautionary measure to assure it would never happen again, he decided it was time to throw out his collection of comic books and, just for good measure, he would clean up his room. After all, he reasoned, a tidy room means a tidy mind.
That morning the shower had never felt so good. He remembered an old song he’d heard somewhere and sang.
“
I’m gonna trap my troubles in soap bubbles
‘
cause they’re nasty, and grimy, and gray,
I’m gonna trap my troubles in soap bubbles
and watch them float away.
He washed and soaped, cleaned and hoped, and bundled and roped the comic books until he believed that everything was right in the world, and he was sitting in the kitchen tying the last bundle of comic books when his mother came in.
“You’re up early,” she said, running her fingers through his hair and kissing the top of his head.
“Yeah,” he replied, “I’m getting rid of these comic books. The stories are silly, and my mind needs facts, not science fiction.”
“Whatever’s gotten into you?” she asked. “You’ve even cleaned up your room.” She gazed at him quizzically.
“You’re always asking me to do it, aren’t you?”
“I am,” she laughed as she raised her eyebrows, “but it never worked before. Are you worried about something?”
“Worried!” he repeated with a snort and a laugh. “Me? No! I’m a kid; what have I got to be worried about?”
“Well, you’re acting very strangely,” she said, scrutinizing him. “You must be hungry; why don’t we have some bacon and eggs for breakfast?” She opened the fridge and looked inside.
“Yeah, I’m as hungry as a bear,” John said, and he immediately burst into a cloud of shiny particles that metamorphosed into a brown bear cub. The little bear stared at his paws in disbelief; fear filled his eyes.
“Would you like fried or scrambled?” his mother asked, gazing into the refrigerator, and the bear cub roared in reply. Stunned by the wild outcry, her head jerked up at the noise and hit the roof of the fridge. “Ouch!” she yelled, as the bear thrashed around at the table behind her, his huge paw swiping a glass of milk and sending it careening to the floor.
***
This time there was no journey across outer or inner space; there wasn’t even any time to think. John was bursting with anger and embarrassment; it seemed like all he did was blink, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring into those of a kindly old man sitting in a comfortable leather chair beside a fireplace.
“I see you’re beginning to play with time and space,” he said with a chuckle as he tugged at the woolen blanket covering his legs.”
John was livid, and he was just about to scream at the old man when he realized he had no idea who he was! “Are you the toad? Or the mouse?” he asked suspiciously.
“Goodness no,” the old man replied with a titter, “You can completely disregard anything that showboat says; he’s all flash and pizzazz, no substance. I am the Master of the Simple Taste, at your service!”
The old man had a warmth and a sincerity that completely deflated John’s self-absorbed arrogance and pride. “You must help me,” he pleaded. “I’m completely lost, I have no idea who I am, and I’m losing my mind.”
“Putting one foot in front of the other can feel that way in any arena, can’t it?
John stared at him in disbelief as he sat laughing softly. “You don’t understand,” he said pitifully, “All I said was,
I’m as hungry as a bear
, and I turned into one, sitting at my own kitchen table. A bear! A wild beast!”
“It does seem preposterous doesn’t it?” the old man replied.
“Preposterous!” John rejoined, losing it. “My life is over! I’m a bear, and my mother’s going to see me, and they’re going to come and shoot me or lock me up and put me on display!”
“Oh boo-hoo,” said the old Master. “One little complexity in your life and you give up without even knowing what lies beyond it!”
“You are a cruel and evil old man,” John retorted, “It’s your fault that I’m in this position, and you refuse to help me to get out of it!”
“It’s not my fault you’re here,” whispered the old Master. “You’re here because someone in your universe is trying to change the structure of matter.”
“But that’s got nothing to do with me!” exclaimed John.
“Doesn’t it?” the old Master asked. “When the structure of matter changes because there’s consciousness behind it, it shifts through its smallest components into that which the consciousness determines. Sound familiar?”
John considered his immediate predicament. “Kind of,” he mumbled.
“And if the ones that are trying to attain this knowledge are not stopped, the universe and everything in it will be obliterated, and nothing will be left—nothing!”