Journeys of the Mind

by Sonny Whitelaw Sean Williams

  Peter grunted and sipped at his coffee. ‘Real life isn't like physics, Jed. It's never simple. Complexity works nine times out of ten.'

  'I know. I'm learning that, and it bothers me.’ Jed punched his cousin on the arm. ‘But listen to you, man. You're only ten years older than me. Since when did you earn the right to dispense truisms?'

  Peter didn't respond verbally. With the hand not holding his cup of coffee, he pulled a pistol out of his pocket and put it onto the table between them.

  Jed eyed the weapon with wary surprise, knowing instinctively that it was loaded but not letting himself back away. ‘You're not thinking of—'

  'It doesn't matter what I think.’ The bruise on Peter's forehead stood out like a curse. ‘I just want you to know that it's here, in case you ever need it.'

  Jed stared at his cousin for an unmeasurable time. The naked trepidation on the faces of the people in the bus stared back at him. ‘I won't.'

  'You don't mean that. Only a fool would entirely rule out any possibility.'

  There was no obvious response to that comment, so Jed let it pass. Together they watched the sunlight outside brighten for a while then dim as a cloud of smog rose to meet it.

  * * * *

  The front door slammed at nine-thirty when Jed left to catch the bus. Peter rose from his bed, where he had retired to listen to the news on the radio, then took a quick shower, dressed, and dismissed the idea of going out. Too hot and bright by far for his aching head. Besides, Felix might be waiting for him again.

  The news was little more than a catalogue of misfortunes, famines and skirmishes from around the globe, few of which caught his attention. He changed frequencies when an OWE advert came on:

  DEATH awaits those

  Who SPOIL their own nests!

  Think BEFORE you shit!

  All the other stations were playing oldies, unconsciously harking back to better times when the planet was only half-dead and there had still been time to do something about it.

  He sat in the lounge and stared blankly through the window. The NIMBY Nineties attitude—Not In My Back Yard—was something OWE particularly railed against, but Peter didn't mind. If there was only one yard and everyone was in it, that was fine with him. It just hurt knowing he wouldn't feel so bad if he had someone to keep him company...

  Shortly before noon, he idly watched a car pull to a halt outside his house, and didn't recognise the driver until she stepped out. She had cut her hair into a tidy bob and started wearing make-up. Her dress was more formal also, no longer the jeans and loose t-shirts he remembered with fondness. As she opened the gate and strode up the path to the verandah, he considered pretending he wasn't home—but what was the point? He had to face her eventually.

  'Hello, Carol,’ he said, opening the door an instant before she knocked.

  She blinked at him, startled, but recovered quickly. ‘Hello, Peter.'

  'What do you want?'

  'We need to talk.'

  'Do we? I have nothing to say to you.'

  'We need to discuss the divorce—'

  'You already know I'll contest whatever you ask for.'

  'You're not making it any easier, Peter. For both of us. For everyone.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Can I come in?'

  'No. I want you to leave before I call the police. You're trespassing.'

  'I'm doing no such thing. This house is only half yours, remember?'

  He reluctantly acknowledged the point. ‘Out here will be fine, then. Take a seat.'

  She looked around her and eventually chose a spot on the verandah's brick wall. He leaned against the door and folded his arms. The sunlight shining through her cotton blouse gave him a perfect silhouette of her waist and breasts. He tried to ignore it.

  'Before you say anything,’ she began, ‘I'm here of my own accord. James, my sector coordinator, warned me against coming.'

  'Why? Was he afraid I'd corrupt you?'

  'No. He didn't think you'd respond to reason. I'm not sure you will either, but I have to try.'

  'Do your worst,’ he said.

  She looked down at her hands, then wiped them on her skirt. ‘The simple fact is, Peter, there's a lot of work to do and not enough resources. I'm not talking about refugees and food riots in Africa. Australia has problems, too.'

  'Keep talking. You haven't told me anything I don't already know.'

  'No? Well, did you know that the Prime Minister tabled a motion this morning in a secret sitting of Parliament to impose martial law? It was defeated by only two votes.'

  Peter stared at her. ‘You're kidding.'

  'Would I joke about something like this? The country's on the brink of complete environmental, economic and social collapse. We need all the help and money we can get. By not letting us have what's rightfully mine, you're doing your bit to make things worse.'

  'Like the self-centred bastard you always said I was?'

  Her face tightened into a mask. ‘Don't prove me right just to score a point, Peter, please. We're serious, and we don't have time to go through the courts. Just days could make a difference.'

  'How much do you want?’ he asked, not entirely certain what he meant by the question: What are you going to steal from me this time? or What will it take to bring you back?

  'Not everything. We only want what can be easily liquidated.'

  ''We'? Who's this ‘we’ you keep mentioning?'

  She ignored the interruption. ‘The house, for instance; you can have that. And the car. But the deposits, the savings account, whatever's left from your severance pay-out—'

  'If I let you have that, what will I live on?'

  'Unemployment, rent from Jed—Jesus, Peter, you could even get a job, you know!’ The flash of anger was quickly buried. ‘We're prepared to negotiate a fifty-fifty split. Half of what you have—which we value at about two hundred and fifty thousand—belongs to us.'

  'To you. It belongs to you. Not you and your bloody friends.'

  She was silent so long he thought he'd pushed her too far. When she finally spoke, her voice was icy.

  'What I choose to do with my life is my business, not yours. Not any more.'

  'No? Then maybe I should just kill myself and leave you to live with the guilt.'

  'Why should I feel guilty, Peter? You'd be doing the world a favour.'

  He winced. ‘That was uncalled-for.'

  'And that wasn't what I meant.’ She sounded almost amused. ‘Have you checked your will lately? Don't you realise that if you commit suicide, I—we—get everything?'

  A block of ice dropped into Peter's stomach at that thought. All the times he had taken the revolver from his cupboard and considered that option, he'd never remembered his will—never thought about what would happen after.

  That prompted another thought. If, she had said. And: We don't have time to go through the courts...

  'What exactly are you driving at, Carol? Are you threatening me?'

  She glanced away. ‘No,’ she said, and he could tell that she was lying.

  'Jesus wept.’ His skin had broken into goose-bumps. ‘You're even crazier than I thought.'

  'No we're not. We're desperate, and you can't fight logic. We'll all die if we don't do anything, but we can't do anything without money. We therefore need the money that's rightfully mine—which you won't give to us voluntarily. If we can't make you hand it over quickly enough, then—'

  'Why should I, Carol? You come here raving about a disaster I don't know anything about and expect me to drop everything to help. Why isn't it in the news if it's so urgent?'

  'The government wants to avoid a panic.’ Her eyes were wide, frightening in their earnestness. ‘Believe me, Peter. It's all true; we have spies in Canberra who have confirmed everything. Can't you feel it in the air? A pressure, as though something's about to burst—or stretch until the world snaps?'

  He waved the imagery aside. He did know the feeling well, but it had nothing to do with the rest of the world. ‘Is that rea
lly it, then? You only came to execute me?'

  'Of course not, Peter.’ She stood and stepped closer, her silhouette taunting him. ‘I came to give you one last chance to see reason.'

  He pulled the gun from his pocket and pointed it at her stomach.

  'Stay away from me,’ he said. ‘Take one more step and I'll blow your guts out.'

  She blanched and raised her hands. ‘Peter, don't be stupid—'

  'Why not? Will it make any difference? Or are you telling me I'm wrong?'

  Tears began to flow down her cheeks. ‘Oh, Peter—'

  'Don't ‘Oh, Peter’ me. You want me dead! What happened to the ‘sanctity of life’ and all that shit? I bet you'd love me to come back as an insect so you could step on me, grind me into the dirt again and again—'

  'That's not what I want, or what I believe!’ Even at gun-point she wouldn't let her beliefs go undefended. ‘We're put into this life for a reason—to learn, to grow—and we only move on when we have learnt that lesson.'

  'Seriously? You've really fallen for this shit?'

  'Half the world believes in reincarnation; they can't all be wrong.'

  'Better them than me.'

  'Well, at least we're trying to help.'

  'A fat lot of good that's going to do any of us if we don't need help. Where's your evidence?'

  'All around us!’ She waved a hand at the garden, the gesture encompassing the entire world. ‘We make our own lives, Peter, and we have no-one else to blame but—'

  'I've read your fucking hand-outs.’ All his pent-up bitterness poured forth in an unstoppable wave: ‘If you're right and the world is falling apart around us, then why is everyone paying for bad karma right bloody now? Is this year, this entire fucking century, the karmic equivalent of hell? Is that what you're saying? That it's all our fault? Everything?'

  Her hands were clasped in an attitude of prayer in front of her breasts as she replied: ‘Who else's could it be, Peter?'

  'I don't know—and, to tell you the truth, I don't give a damn. But it's not me. You have no right to make me feel guilty for something I haven't done!'

  She shook her head, unable to retreat from her beliefs but unable to convince him either. ‘Life goes on,’ she said. ‘As long one person's left alive, there's still hope. And wherever there's hope, we will be.'

  'You and your friends? Or you and me?'

  'What's the difference? We're all grains of dust blowing in and out of Gaia's lungs. In and out, around and around, forever. That's what Jean says, and I believe her even if it doesn't fit the doctrine exactly. In the long run—'

  'Wait.’ Peter tripped over the hauntingly familiar metaphor. ‘Who's this Jean?'

  'Just someone I know. Not very well, but—'

  'Tell me what else she's said.'

  Carol frowned. ‘What does this have to do with us?'

  'Has she mentioned time? That there may be only one mote of dust—'

  'Yes, but how could you have known that?’ She stared back at him, startled herself. ‘I don't understand what she means. Do you?'

  'No.’ His empty hand rubbed at his bruised temple. ‘If anything I'm more confused than ever.'

  'That makes two of us.'

  Suddenly Felix was standing next to him. ‘See how close she is to realising the truth?'

  Peter jumped. ‘Jesus! Where the hell did you come from?'

  'From the same place when you last asked that question.'

  He shook his head. ‘Carol, if you think Jean is weird, just wait until you hear—'

  He stopped. His ex-wife stood opposite him, frozen in place. Her eyes gazed vacantly in his direction, but saw nothing.

  'What's going on, Felix?'

  'The truth is breaking free.'

  He wanted to scream. ‘What truth?'

  'The truth about life and likeness.’ Felix's voice was soothing but couldn't hide a dark undercurrent. ‘Traditionally, people believe that reincarnation works only in one direction. They assume that when we die we will be reborn in the future.’ He leaned forward to emphasise his words. ‘This may have been so in the past, when the world's population was small and niches for rebirth were few. But in this century—with so many children, so many vacancies—when we die we are trapped, forced into a concurrent—even a past—incarnation. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough souls to go around. Do you understand what this means?'

  'Should I?'

  Felix leaned back. ‘Reincarnation in recent decades has been, to put it mildly, something of a disaster.'

  'Let me get this straight.’ Peter's hand rubbed harder at his bruised temple, as though trying to keep the thoughts in. ‘You're saying that reincarnation works in all directions? That if I died I might come back as—I don't know—my mother or something?'

  'Or your son, or your cousin, or all of the above. There's no way of predicting.'

  A light burst in his head, the bulb of insanity. ‘You're about to tell me that there's only one soul accounting for all of us. That we are, at the deepest level, the same person.'

  Felix smiled at that. ‘Remember likeness? The woman I talked about earlier, who married into another community but remains isolated? The local likeness is a single soul interweaved among many people, and she comes from outside stock—from a different soul. Indeed, there may be only a relative handful of true individuals on the planet, each bearing a distinct difference from the others. And even they may be only local tangles in the entire human soul. In a skein that vast—encompassing all of human history—anything is possible.'

  'One world: one soul?’ said Peter. ‘Is that what you and your friends have been hinting at?'

  'Exactly. And don't you see what this means?’ Felix's voice became urgent again. ‘This congested period of history—with so many lives and so many deaths—is a whirlpool, drawing in souls from all the times around it—past and future. It is a vortex from which few escape quickly, and then only with luck. The velocity of the average soul, if you like, is so high that any one soul may spend numerous incarnations re-experiencing trauma from numerous angles. Especially at the end time, when there is nothing but trauma. The time that is now.'

  'We're all trapped in here?’ Strange as the idea was, it resonated with the way he was feeling. This was an idea he could accept, no matter how crazy it sounded.

  'You are close to the focus of disturbance, Peter, to the seed-crystal that will precipitate the chaos.'

  'What—a plague? A war?'

  'No. Those events are symptoms, not causes.'

  'Then I still don't get it.'

  'From inside, you cannot. There is no longer a clear distinction between ‘who’ and ‘where'. All is blurred; causality is fraying. I can tell you, however, that the true collapse begins within—in the soul itself—and that it must happen soon. If it doesn't, the vortex will collapse upon itself, creating a singularity beyond which no earth-born life can ever pass.'

  Peter shook his head, completely lost. Felix rambled on but he was no longer listening. He turned back to Carol; she hadn't moved in the intervening minutes. He felt suddenly awkward, confronting his ex-wife with a gun in his hand and debating metaphysics while the planet fell apart around him.

  God, she was so beautiful. The sun was still behind her; her hair and skin were all shining and gold. Yet he was surprised to realise that he had stopped loving her some time ago. He had just wanted her back for the sake of it—out of habit, as a matter of principle, motivated by little more than selfishness. The realisation made him feel slightly ill: how could he have been that mechanical, that shallow, without realising?

  He didn't want to hurt her. If OWE really wanted him out of the way then he had to give her the credit for at least trying to warn him. Whatever had passed between them, and however badly he had acted, she had taken the time to think of him, and he was grateful for that. More than anything else in the world, he felt like a long, cold drink in the shade of the house where at last, perhaps, they could discuss their futures more amicably.
r />   'How long?’ he asked Felix. ‘How long do we have to sort this out?'

  Silence. When Peter turned, the man had disappeared. ‘Felix?'

  Carol, suddenly animated again, also looked around. ‘Jean?'

  A Toyota wagon pulled up with a jerk to the curb across the road, and two men in dark suits climbed out. Carol saw the car—and stiffened.

  'Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘They said they'd wait!'

  'Who?'

  She turned back to face him, and her eyes were full of warning.

  Anger made his thoughts race, backtracking furiously over the conversation. He couldn't believe he'd been about to negotiate with Carol and her friends—with maniacs of this calibre, the insane Japanese poets themselves. They'd obviously sent her in to keep him home and distracted while they made their approach.

  We've come for YOU!

  (he imagined them chanting with lunatic glee)

  We want your MONEY

  and YOU can't stop US!

  Sunlight glinted off the pistol as he raised it. The two men saw it and ducked for the cover of his next-door neighbour's fence. He fired once anyway and dived behind the wall of the verandah.

  Answering fire ricocheted off the front of the house. Carol stood her ground in a stunned panic, not knowing which way to run.

  Something rustled along the fence, down the side of the house. The two men had split up.

  Peter slithered across the verandah.

  'Get inside!’ he hissed at her, gesturing curtly with the pistol. ‘We can't stay out here. It's too dangerous!'

  She hesitated. Another shot whined past her. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down.

  'Jesus, Carol! Do you want to be shot?'

  'They're not firing at me,’ she retorted, eyes wide. ‘It's you, Peter—'

  'Yeah? I don't think they mind much either way. The fewer who know about it the better.'

  Her eyes were confused. ‘No!'

  'Yes!’ His fingers tightened as she began to struggle. ‘If we're all to blame, then we all have to be punished, right?'

  'No, I—Peter!'

  The screen door slammed like a gunshot behind them as he dragged her into the house. He was sunblind for a second, and the darkness felt as deep as a pit, as deep as despair. The burbling of the radio in the bedroom did little to dispel the gloom. He felt like the prow of a ship smashing through dark, icy waters. If he stopped, they would close over his head and he would be gone forever. And from this black sea, he knew, there would be no easy escape.