April Fools

Birth! Life! Squalling, bloody, fidgeting, Life!

You perceive.

You exist.

Yet, you – want/need/must have; so you begin to cry, to wail . . . and your need is met in soft, sweet wholesomeness and nourishment, and you are Content.

– – –

Your strange existence seems perfectly normal to you, a world of wonders. It is really all powered by the nearby iron sun, you know. Fusion and fission in superabundance of light, heat and gravity churn merrily to produce multiple quadrillions of ergs of energy rushing to meet the needs of your world, revolving in the cold Emptiness. Your world is iron too, or at least the center of it is, a rather warm molten core. But all this is so utterly unknown to you, isn’t it? You rarely think upon any of it, because you are more enmeshed in something much more tangible and urgent, which you call the Horrible Present.

For you, your perception of Reality began when you were very young, watching a tiny fly caught in the electrochemical mesh of surface tension in the water of a teacup. You watched entranced, as the poor fly could not leave that water’s surface, somehow being trapped in its smooth surface, regardless of all its frantic efforts to free itself. Eventually the fly became still, having drowned in the water’s surface.

Your life now, upon continual reflection of that small event, seems also to be trapped, just as inextricably, in the overwhelming surface tension of the Present. You chide under its forces. You hate it. You seem to have no control over your Life at all. Ever increasing Events conspire to deny you choice of movement. You hate your work, your family, your options, your very Life.

The Present is an interesting phenomenon, you know. It is a tidal-force of all of Space and Matter (Bound electromagnetic, luminescent energy, really, in a local sense). It is also called Duration, Causation, and sometimes referred to as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Events happen. They transpire, all on a Line, running along a largely predetermined path. This wave-front of Reality is what we perceive of as the passage of Time, but what should really be called the Present, and you are perfectly correct: It is a mesh-mash in which you are completely stuck. And so you will be – we all will be, until the End.

You have sought refuge in Verne, Wells and Asimov, haven’t you? You dream of Other Places, Other Times, and other Realities, maybe with a touch of Burroughs, hum?

You dream. Why not? Millions thoughtlessly dream via the Boobtube, don’t they? What is wrong with wanting OUT?

Do you really, really want Out? Are you sure? I am your conscience, your Muse. Your Alter-Ego, perhaps, for I am the maker of your Dreams, and the sole source of your Discomfort, in this ever Present Reality. And I can take you there, if you really want to see it.

So? Do you passionately, urgently want to See? You want to know what it is really like, Outside? You wish to be truly free of this overwhelming, inextricable Present?

Come. I will bring you there – Out.

And perhaps, if you are good, I will bring you back again. That is, if you ever want to come back to your mundane, useless and pointless existence in the Present.

Give me your arm, now. That’s right. Let us pull the poor fly free from its prison of the surface tension of the Present.

What? Your arm is gone? It feels numb, non-existent? Nonsense. It is still there.

No, you are not having a heart attack. This is more like what you would feel if you had advanced cancer, and your body was being pumped full of morphine. But, relax. You will soon be free. Trust me.

You are close, now. Just a leg and a foot, to pull free from the Present, as its tidal force holds onto you so relentlessly. Are you afraid? Is it getting Dark? Just a final, final, letting go, and you will soon be free of Reality.

Elsewhen!

It was that final SNAP, and now you dimly feel yourself falling, falling.

Darkness. Or the absence of light.

Silence. Or the absence of sound.

Your perceptions are on fire. There is, for the first time, nothing for them to feel or perceive. Nothing to touch, taste, smell, hear, or see.

Fear comes at you.

But you wanted to see it. You wanted to come, didn’t you? You said you would be unafraid. You had to know what it was like. You needed to experience it for yourself. You supposed Eternity was filled with worlds unknown, all yours to explore at your leisure. But I told you, didn’t I?

Here is nothing you could imagine. This is Outside.

In the dimness, you suppress your panic. Gazing around, you notice that you are on the threshold of a doorway. It is the dimensions of it that shock you. If you had a body, your lungs would be pumping air in gasps of sheer terror at the impossible size of it all. You are facing inward to a room, thousands of feet across, and hundreds of feet high: An utterly empty room. In the ultimate dimness, for there is no light here, you see the shadows of the far walls, immutable with dark samelessness.

You hurriedly glide across the threshold of the impossibly large doorway, into the room, because you suddenly sense the Outside behind you, and the thought of that horrific, impossibly empty immensity frightens you even more. You need shelter, so the fearfully large room seems a tiny comfort, and so you enter its nearly equal emptiness.

In the dry, vacant dimness, you see some lines, threads, or something tangible. Your curiosity finally comes to the fore – the thing that drove you here to begin with. What are these lines, these pulsing threads? You follow one, trying to get close to it, for it seems to be full of pulses of slow moving light.

You perceive that the thread you are approaching is the Present Reality you just came from. Like looking into a prism, you can vaguely see the bright throbbing Present, but it is moving rather rapidly along the length of the tread, now as large as a cable, and the point of light you want to cling to, skitters off rapidly into the distance.

You reach for the thread to cling to it, as it goes dark, but you find you have no hands.

That’s right, you say to yourself. All that is Here is your consciousness, nearly empty, and newly divorced from the Present. Devoid of Choice.

Again, in near panic, you try to find the cable-thread again. But instead, you see that there are many of them in the room. Thousands, millions of them.

Wonder again excites you, and you look around for more, trying to understand it all.

Floating across the vastness of the empty room, you see other doorways, always open, doorless entryways into other equally impossible rooms. What does it all mean?

Those threads, are sometimes dormant and dark, and sometimes dimly pulsing with movement and light. Where do they go? What are they for?

You float through endless halls and rooms looking at the threads, and you finally perceive that these are all your Life, your Reality – your ever, never-ending Present. It is like you are looking at your Life as a gigantic worm, flowing back and forth across a finite world, folding and redoubling back upon itself, as you move in and out of your tiny place and station in the ever moving Present – years and years of it. Decades.

Elation comes at you, for you think you can see all of your Life, from your Birth to your End, and you can enjoy it all again and again, here Outside the Present.

But. But.

There arises in you a hopelessness. How can you experience anything here? How can to touch the Present, as it everlastingly slides away from you? How can you fashion any device to nail down the ever moving Present when you find it?

Vaguely, you begin to hunger for Reality. A body. Breath. Breathing. Touch.

You remember, don’t you? You remember being embedded like a fly in the Present.

How you hated it. How you wanted to be free of it. How you yearned for Eternity, and the power to simply go anywhere and anywhen, as your imagination of it fired your dreams.

But here you are. Outside of the Present. It is not at all what you thought it would be.

Emptiness: Utter, complete, soulless, dead, Emptiness.

Hell could be no worse (but you would be wrong).

Back. Back. Got to go back to the place where you were before. Again, panic. Utter, complete, total Panic.

For now you perceive, in the dark empty dimness, the ultimate horror.

All of this is not impossibly large empty rooms, with a few cables of threads laid across the floor. Those are only your own life; your own personal brief Existence.

There are also all the Others Here. The other lives. The other souls, locked into the ever moving Present. Their threads completely fill these vast empty rooms of Time as well.

If you had a voice, you would scream in terror, for these rooms of the recent Past and the near Reality are not empty at all. They are impossibly filled to overflowing with the Threads.

You choke. You need air, but there is none here. Nor do you have lungs to employ breath, remember?

Reality, the ever moving, ever Present, is filled with all the ‘coulda/woulda/shouldas of your Life. Go. Stay. Left. Right. Up. Down. Slow. Fast. Yes. No. Choices you made in the Present. Continual choices. Some you took. Some you abandoned, neglected. But they are all Here, in this timeless Outside.

You see it now, how your threads diverge, emerge, divide, combine – not just within your own existence, but with every other soul you ever contacted, connected with.

How shall you escape? How can you leave these cloying, lifeless, impossibly filled rooms? To be trapped forever within all the lines, these never ending lines.

Back. Back! BACK!

You must leave this emptiness. You can no longer abide Here. Outside.

Dizziness. Darkness. You finally feel the utter sweetness of Oblivion.

– – – –

See.

I told you I would take care of you.

I told you I would bring you back again. That is, if you really, really wanted to come back from all that wonderful Eternity – Didn’t I?

Where was that place? Well, actually it was more Under than Out: The near non-existent substructure of Reality. Duration and Chance happen to all men, you see. Where you were was a place big enough for Everything to happen that is/will/might Happen. There is no farther Out than that, don’t you see?

So. Welcome back to the ever moving, ever changing Present. Try to enjoy it – while you still have it, hum?

– – – –

This Sunday, April Fools Day is supposed to be a day of joy, of remembrance, a reminder of all the things that don’t exist: A remembrance of all the good things that you have and hold, and cherish – in your own private, Present Reality.

You really do have choices, you know. You do have Absolute Freedom. You can chose to do whatever you want – if you have the courage to Live Life. Life favors the Bold, doesn’t it?

And also, next Sunday is place in time called Easter. They do not always coincide like this. Why not go meet a man who comes from a far more permanent and free Reality than this one? I am certain you will enjoy that trip far more than our recent little jaunt.

Happy April Fools Day!

~ Roger

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