Live and Let Learn

by Dixon Block

  Jason looked skeptical, “Then why am I in a hospital?”

  “Because you believed you should be in a hospital. When you woke up - before you understood exactly what had transpired before you died - was it a hospital that you woke up in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Think hard.”

  Jason frowned, “I remember it was dark, but then you must have turned on the lights.”

  “Jason,” Alan spoke softly, “I understand how unconventional it is to die. I understand how much you long to make sense of it all through logic. I really do. But the truth of the matter, the only thing that really does make sense, is that you can’t use only what you know to explain things you do not yet know anything about.”

  Jason thought about that.

  ***

  “So, are you God?” Jason asked during another conversation.

  “That’s one of the things you’ve called me.”

  “And the others?”

  “Sometimes Allah or Elohim. Yahweh I remember . . . Nkosi, Jehovah, and Olodumare to name a few common ones. Sometimes Charles, Stephanie, or, of course, Alan. The list goes on.” He winked.

  “Some of those are religious,” Jason noted.

  “All of them are if you define religion as believing there is some entity that controls everything.”

  “So you are that entity?”

  “I seem to be to you, don’t I?” Alan replied.

  “You seem to have all the answers, so I would say yes.”

  “Jason, I have the answers because I’ve been Watching you long enough to know them.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it. In your years, I don’t think there would be a number that high, at least not one you would be familiar with. For me, it seems to be only a fraction of what you would consider to be my life. Now is it my turn to ask a question?”

  “Go ahead,” Jason said.

  “I’m curious what exactly you are thinking.”

  “Shouldn’t you know that if you are God?”

  “I never confirmed that I am what you call God. I merely agreed that you do indeed call me by that name at times. I would call myself a Watcher. I keep an eye on you and I try to understand all that I can about your life. I cannot read your mind, Jason; your thoughts are your own. I usually have a fairly good guess about what is going on in it though, because as I said I’ve been Watching you, well, forever would be a good estimate.” Alan smiled again as he waited for Jason’s answer.

  “I’m thinking about my wife. And my children.”

  “Your child, you mean.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You, Jason Dawds, only ever sired one child.”

  “I have two children. Sam and Sarah.” Jason said firmly.

  “Jason, please, when you first awoke here you asked about your daughter, your wife, and Sam. You have never spoken to me about him and actually called him your son. Tell me now, is he your son?”

  Jason was angry, “Whose son would he be if he wasn’t mine!”

  “I think we both know the answer to that.” Alan said simply. And Jason sighed because he did indeed know, though he had tried his best not to believe it.

  “Is he John’s?” he asked reluctantly.

  “Yes,” came the reply. And that was that.

  *****

  John Granus slowly put down his gun, shocked that he had actually shot someone. His police training took him over and almost automatically he radioed for an ambulance and ran into the room. There was a man on the ground, no, a boy, he thought. He couldn’t be older than nineteen or so. Beside the thief lay the lifeless body of Granus’ best friend.

  There was a baby crying, Sarah. The thief was also sobbing at his close call with death. Yet there was no sound whatsoever coming from the dead body and it made Granus feel cold. His fingers had the prickly sensation of pins and needles, as if they were falling asleep. He had saved a life. He knew that, but at the cost of another; a friend. He heard sirens and he knew he wouldn’t be alone for long. He whispered his apology and a tear rolled down his cheek.

  *****

  Jason’s eyes fluttered open. He had had an upsetting dream, not quite a nightmare, but certainly disturbing. Despite this though he was well-rested and seemed to be peaceful still. Alan was sitting by his side.

  “Are you always here?” he joked with the curious man.

  “When you need me here, of course,” Alan shrugged.

  Jason thought for a moment. He knew that Alan’s answer wouldn’t be much help to him, but he wanted to ask about the dream.

  “I dreamed of the day I died,” he started, “I saw my body, and my daughter, and even the thief.”

  “Did you?” Alan asked, bemused. “Who else did you see?”

  “No one.”

  “Not the man who killed you?”

  “No I –,” he paused, thinking, “I was the man I guess. . .”

  Alan watched him as he thought, trying to remember exactly how the dream had happened.

  “I was the killer. The officer I mean. And I shot myself because I was going to kill the robber, with the knife.”

  Alan clapped his hands together. “Very good!” he exclaimed, “And so clear already. You really are wonderful.”

  He looked happy Jason noted, but his eyes seemed to be a little sad. His smile seemed forced.

  “I felt sad for killing me. Shouldn’t I have been happy that I stopped a murder?”

  “Were you planning to murder that young man?” Alan questioned.

  “I wasn’t planning on anything . . .”

  “Why mention it then?”

  “Because I think I was going to kill him anyway. He could have hurt Sarah!”

  “How many people here believe that, Jason?” Alan asked him, eyebrows raised.

  Jason looked to the ground.

  ***

  This time Jason was in a vast wooded area. It was still. There were no animals or sounds. There was no wind or water flowing. Only silence.

  He looked around, he wanted to ask Alan about the change of scenery, but he was nowhere in sight. He thought about calling for him, he knew, somehow, that calling for the man would bring him here but he stopped before making a sound. Alan had said he was always there when Jason needed him. Perhaps he wasn’t here because Jason needed a moment alone instead.

  Jason walked. He didn’t know where he was going, if anywhere, but he kept walking through the silent wood and thought. He thought about his family and his friends. He thought about things he had read as a boy and things he had written as a man. He thought about girls he had liked and what would have been if he and Diane had not been pregnant.

  Here he stopped, remembering that in fact he and Diane had not been pregnant. He tried to remember why they had married. Why she hadn’t instead married John? And he knew that she had loved him. He realised in this moment that a part of him had always known about Sam, but it had never made him feel like less of a father to the boy. He and Diane had married because they loved each other and they wanted to love Sam together as well. He didn’t know exactly why, but it felt right to him and he didn’t fight it. In fact it made him feel much better.

  Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed to him as if the second the wave of relief had washed over him and the tension of thought broken, the forest became teeming with life. He heard birds singing and a rabbit bounded past his foot. A brook gurgled in the distance and the entire place seemed more relaxing, despite the added noises.

  Jason wanted to stay in the place for a while; he had so much on his mind it was nice to have a moment where nothing else seemed to matter. Alone. So he did stay. He didn’t know how long, the sun didn’t seem to move at all, but he thought more on his entire life.

  He thought about how when he had been the officer, he knew he was John. Killed by his best friend preventing the death of a criminal. Was it better to have been stopped or would he have been able to live with himself if he had become a killer himse
lf? The thief wouldn’t have hurt Sarah. There was no doubt. Jason knew it when he was alive, but the emotions had needed an outlet. He had everything bottled up and it just happened that Billy Sullivan gave him an opportunity that he justified to himself was meant to release his anger.

  He also thought about how he had felt as Granus in his dream. The man had felt incredibly guilty for killing him, but Jason felt there was more. For the moments before he pulled the trigger, Granus knew that the knife-wielding man was his friend . . . and the only obstacle between him and Diane, and his son. Perhaps he stopped a murder and his friend from becoming a murderer, but Jason knew that for the rest of his life John Granus would wonder about the true motives behind his actions.

  He continued to think; things that he didn’t think he would ever be able to recall about his past seemed to offer themselves up to him with such astounding clarity that it was a surprise that he had never thought of them before. Little details like the colour of his shirt on his first day at school were easy to remember. There was no doubt about it, hell, he could remember the colour of all the shirts in the class. It was strange, but again it felt right and he did not feel the need to question the validity of his thoughts. Things just were.

  He watched scenes in his own head that he hadn’t visited in years and observed as a younger self made choices he knew he would come to regret. A bad haircut, choosing a certain school, saying certain things to certain people. He watched it all and wondered if he could have done things differently. Immediately his thoughts changed.

  These images were unfamiliar. He recognised himself but not where he was. It seemed to be a dorm room of some kind but not his own. He looked around and realised that he was no longer in a forest at all but actually in the dorm room. And he was younger, the age he was when he went to university.

  Was it possible? Could he really have changed his life with a mere thought of having chosen differently? Of course that was ridiculous, but at the same time he was dead now and learning a lot of new things that would have been ridiculous to him before. Maybe this shouldn’t be as much of a surprise to him as it was. Alan had told him he couldn’t make sense of new things using only his current knowledge. He assumed he would have to really learn how these strange occurrences worked.

  “Hello, welcome to Illinois State University! I’m your Don, Georgia, and I’m assuming you are either Jason or you are in the wrong room!”

  It was a beautiful girl smiling at him from the door of the room. She knew his name? Impossible! He was supposed to be here, he could change his life. Or at least have a new one.

  “Hi,” he said tentatively, he wasn’t sure what to do, “I’m still taking a look around. Could you come back later?”

  “Of course! Just remember not to lock your door with your student card inside because you won’t be able to get back in without security’s help.” She smiled her dazzling smile and left.

  Jason slumped onto the bed. Amazed. In a few seconds he had gone from being dead in an imaginary forest to being eighteen again and in college, completely able to rewrite his life. He could see boxes and a suitcase in the corner. He was really here.

  What would be the first thing to do? Would he join sports teams? He had always wished he had been more athletic. Or maybe he should call his parents and warn them about the speed trap on the way home from dropping him off at his new home. Although, he wasn’t sure whether it still applied if they were driving from Illinois State and not Indianapolis University. In fact he wasn’t sure if anything would be the same in this alternate reality.

  He sat down, his head spinning as he wondered whether he would see his family again. What if he had completely eliminated his children’s existence by changing the past? He didn’t mean for this to happen! He had only wondered ‘what if’ and then everything changed! He tried to slow down his breathing and get a handle on things. People die all the time and their families are safe so his case shouldn’t be different, should it?

  He decided that he probably hadn’t harmed anyone he cared about with his accidental experiment. But the momentary worry had already ruined the opportunity. The whole situation had lost its appeal and he sat on the thin mattress of the room thinking about what to do.

  He could wait for things to change again like they had before, but something that Alan had said to him the first time they met stuck in his mind. Alan had told him that he was the only one in charge of things. At the time he had took it to mean that he was responsible for his life and his decisions, as he had often heard from various people while growing up. But now he wondered if Alan had meant something more.

  When he found himself in the dorm room he remembered the scene around had almost dissolved from that of a forest into his new environment. But he also remembered thinking about if things had been different in his life. Maybe he was the one in charge and he had made things change without even knowing it.

  His surroundings shifted again and he found himself in a white room. A white ceiling, walls, and even the floor. He was wearing white and so was Alan beside him.

  “Whoa,” he said. Everything had been so smooth that if his eyes weren’t open he wouldn’t have known he had moved.

  “Jason!” Alan greeted him, “I was wondering if I’d be seeing you again.”

  “I –,” he began, but was at a loss for words.

  “You’re confused, I bet,” Alan smiled, “Why don’t you tell me what you do know and I’ll fill in the rest if I can, okay?”

  Jason nodded, “I woke up in a forest, but I don’t know how I got there. I guess that’s my first question.”

  Alan laughed, “Well I did promise to fill in the blanks, didn’t I? The forest was quiet, right? And very still, but in a calming way instead of something eerie?”

  “Yes! That’s exactly it.”

  “I believe that is your spot to think. A place where you have no interruptions, not even from me. It’s somewhere that you can really ponder whatever might be troubling you, and as a man who has experienced death recently, I’m sure you have many things troubling you.

  “Jason, did you ever hear other people telling you to find your happy place? Here I call it a Reflection Point, but that would be what they are talking about. The difference is that here you can actually experience It fully. When you are living it only exists as something like imagination. Here it seems you can visit it in a more . . .” he paused, thinking of the correct word, “. . . realistic way.”

  Jason watched the man. He accepted everything he said as true because he knew that it was, but he also speculated at how Alan seemed to be almost guessing at what he was saying.

  “Alan, why do you say it seems like that? Don’t you know?”

  “Not at all for sure!” The man replied cheerily, “I’ve already told you. This is your show and you’re the one in charge. I can only guess at exactly what’s what. But in the past you’ve told me about those quiet spots. Sometimes it’s a beach, sometimes a meadow. It’s usually something in nature, it seems to calm you the most but sometimes it’s a specific place from your life or even somewhere busy if you’re used to thinking in loud environments.”

  “You’ve lost me. What do you mean I’ve told you before? Have we already met while I was alive?”

  “Ah, perhaps next time. You have enough on your mind with your forest, don’t you?” he asked knowingly.

  Jason knew he was right, but the curiosity was almost spilling out of him. He knew to be patient though, thankful that at least he and Alan were at a point in their relationship where his questions were answered, not simply met by more questions and frustrating smiles.

  “You’re right,” he resigned. “At some point the forest was busy though, and loud. Did I finish thinking of whatever I needed to think about?”

  “Now you’re catching on,” Alan seemed pleasantly surprised, “Quick today, aren’t you? Well now you are back here. Would you like to rest?”

  “Actually, I have a question about the time travel.”

 
; “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I had been thinking about what if my life had been different and then I was suddenly myself again, only younger, and it was as if I was reliving the whole thing only having chosen a different university.”

  Alan stared at him for a moment as if he was the one who didn’t know what to say this time. His face seemed to Jason as if it drooped for a moment and it lost all its colour. The man looked confused and shocked . . . and even scared.

  “Did I say something wrong? Does that not usually happen when people die? I thought I had made everything different by accident and so I came back here. I just thought about it and I appeared here with you. I didn’t mean to cause any harm!”

  “Jason!” Alan interrupted him. He had regained his composure and was smiling once more, though Jason could sense the man was not the same as before.

  “There is nothing wrong with what you did, Jason. It’s done all the time and I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about it before.”

  “Then what made you so upset?” Jason asked.

  “It was wrong of me to worry you like that. I was just very surprised that you were able to do that so quickly. Most times it takes a lot longer for people to accept and understand exactly what’s happening.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I understand it all!” Jason interjected.

  “Of course not,” Alan waved his hand nonchalantly, “We are always learning. But my point is that usually one does not acknowledge their control until much later. And even then I am able to Watch what is happening.”

  “You said you’ve Watched me my whole life.”

  “Yes. The only place I can’t see you is at your Reflection Point.”

  “And you didn’t see me in Illinois?”

  “No,” Alan admitted, troubled, “But let’s rest. You’ve had quite an eventful period!” Then he was gone.

  Jason called out his name, worried about the man, but there was no answer. Perhaps, Jason suspected, Alan had a Reflection Point of his own that Jason’s cry could not pierce.