For Giddeon, it was easy. He would try to talk me through what it was he saw and felt when he changed his blood into the proper configurations… however, it just didn’t translate into my inadequate brain. He never lost patience as we would try, and then, try, again. This went on for what seemed like an eternity with no real progress being made. The thing that finally did the trick was accidental, as many discoveries are.
Giddeon broke a capillary tube full of blood, and it splattered onto my lip. I reached up with my knuckle to wipe it away and somehow got a little on my tongue in the process.
My sense of taste had become quite enhanced during the past four years; I hadn’t really paid it much attention other than just enjoying it at all of the restaurants we frequented. I knew the taste of my own blood, because sometimes I would floss too vigorously in the mornings out of habit. The fluid that had splashed on my lip… it was different. Giddeon knew something was up by the expression on my face.
“Giddeon… poke yourself. I need a little blood. I want to try something.”
He took the lancet and popped the end of his index finger. I reached out and collected a bit of his blood on my own finger. I brought it to my mouth and tasted it. I closed my eyes and concentrated on it like a wine taster at one of those contests. Finally, I swallowed and held out my hand.
“Try it, now.”
He punctured my skin and sucked up a drop. After setting the capillary tube in a tray, he went ‘scuba diving’, as he liked to call it. When he returned, there were smile lines crinkling from the corners of his eyes.
“Progress! We’re making progress!”
He ‘showed’ me the sequences and how close they were. He drew a tube of ‘B’ negative from himself and set it down in a rack near my chair. Over the next 24 hours, I think I must have drunk a gallon of his blood. I could never be a vampire.
But, it worked. I finally was a perfect match for Melody, in more ways than one.
__________
I slept for at least 12 hours. When I woke up, I looked at the clock and noted that there were only 36 hours until the wedding. At that point, I wasn’t concerned so much with the fact that she was marrying the wrong guy as I was with the reality that she could possibly die if I didn’t make it back over to her side. I showered, shaved and put on my regular outfit… Levi’s 560 jeans, a golf shirt and tennis shoes. Boris didn’t seem inclined to get up from the bed.
I had nicked myself shaving, and tasted the blood to make sure it hadn’t transmuted back while I was asleep. It still had the same coppery, walnut taste that I had become so familiar with, thanks to Giddeon.
He appeared on board, in his usual silent manner.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“Should I alert the media?”
Gid smiled. “Not yet. Maybe later. I think it may be possible to have a plan ‘B’.”
“Plan ‘B’?”
“For Melody. I have a feeling our movie-going friends from the future can help us.”
I looked at him with a curious expression on my visage. “What makes you believe that?”
“I had a dream about them last night,” he said.
“I didn’t dream anything. I slept like a stone.”
“Maybe that’s what helped me see them… I don’t normally dream on my own. I think they want to help.”
I tilted my head to the side in a questioning way. “We can’t even get back there, remember? We tried.”
“I think they were blocking us.”
“Why?”
He shook his head in the negative. “I don’t know… I believe they might let us come back, now, though. I got that feeling in the dream.” He thought for a moment, and then said, “They obviously know about Melody… that was basically her cat that came traipsing through the wall. Maybe they know of alternate cures for her condition. If they’ve been watching us the past two weeks, they certainly know what we’ve been up to… who knows, perhaps they can even help you cross back over.”
“I’ll try anything, but, if they did all of that, wouldn’t they be tampering with their own timeline? Would they do it? Could they?”
He shook his head, again. “I don’t know. It’s kind of like they have, already. When you get back, you’ll have knowledge of their existence, and that alone could change things… unless they aren’t worried about it. Kind of like us with Daniel. Nothing happened here, or, it was meant to happen.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Or, maybe they know I’m not coming out of the coma and there’s no way I can affect their reality.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t pick up on that,” he said.
I pointed to my head. “7.7 percent, remember?”
“I’ve got to get you back before there’s no room for your ego over here.”
We both laughed at that one.
“Well,” I said, “there’s only one way to find out.”
With a flash, we were gone. I don’t think Boris even noticed we had disappeared.
__________
We were back in the room with the same 4 people. I took that as a good sign.
I looked them over as they lay there, and found myself wondering if they viewed life in real time. If so, maybe they had nothing better to do, and really got into the mundane aspects of human existence in the distant past… not that my time in the coma had been mundane, mind you. However, I would hate to think that they spent days and days hooked up viewing the first 24 years of my existence.
They must have been bored out of their gourds if they had had to tap into that. I hoped for their sake that it was like a download, and they got the whole timeline in just a few hours.
After our first trip there, it had occurred to me, ‘Why only four?’
Giddeon thought that maybe they were among the first to use such technology, and it wasn’t in widespread use, yet. I was partial to the hypothesis that the group was related and they were experiencing it together… like watching a television show on family night. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was if they had information that could help Melody.
This time, they all opened their eyes at once.
__________
Immediately, I got that same feeling of warmth and compassion as before. No holograms appeared as they did, the first time, and it occurred to me that most likely that had been for our benefit… so we would know what it was that they had been seeing. The original female on the end smiled. Just the slightest upward curvatures marked the corners of her mouth, and several seconds passed.
As time dragged out, I began to think that they weren’t going to help us, or maybe, that they couldn’t.
I feared that they were constrained by laws, or physics, or some futuristic morality.
__________
Then, through the wall came a tray, for lack of a better word. It hovered silently in the middle of the room, so Giddeon and I stepped up to it. There, on a piece of paper… plain ordinary paper… was writing.
In English.
I beheld a list of ingredients… some I recognized and some I didn’t… thirteen in all. There was a paragraph concerning the proper amounts, and how to prepare and administer them as an elixir. I could tell Giddeon was memorizing what was before him, and I did my best to do the same. He was done almost instantaneously… it took me the better part of five minutes, mainly because I kept repeating it to myself over and over to make sure I had it right. The tray then made an exit just as something else made an entrance through the smooth surface of the silver wall.
Boris.
Or, at least the closest copy of him possible. He sauntered to the middle of the room and sat there looking at us with big, yellow eyes… oddly, there was a small scar on his face. He meowed, and then turned his attention to licking a paw and rubbing at the old wound.
Chapter 67
My heart was hammering when we returned. Our Boris had moved to the couch, and, I could have sworn he was smiling. He licked a paw and rubbed at his face, also. I shook my head and turned
to Giddeon.
“Did you get it? I’m not sure I remember it all!” I asked and exclaimed.
“Got it… don’t worry.” Giddeon walked over, sat down at the table and produced a pen and paper. He recorded what we had seen. I was very quiet while he did that, not wanting to disrupt his train of thought. When he finished, I had him check it against my version while I recited what was in my head. I was pleased that I had remembered it verbatim, too.
“Plan B sounds kind of nasty,” said Gid. “Plus, she has to drink it every day for a year.”
“I can’t believe it… they actually communicated with us, again. They’re trying to help. Why would they do that?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
I sat down on the couch next to Boris. “That’s not even original.”
“Best I could do on short notice.”
I accepted his explanation. “It just seems like they could be jeopardizing their own existence.”
Boris meowed and rolled over onto his side, wanting to be petted. I reached over and ‘scratched’ him on his belly.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Giddeon. “Maybe you can’t jeopardize your own existence when new worlds are created with each and every decision… new timelines and new probabilities, you know?”
“It’s all so confusing,” I said.
He shrugged. “Or, maybe we’ve been thinking about time all wrong, in our frame of reference. You remember the way some say space is curved?”
I nodded.
He continued, “That would include time. It may not really be a straight line… because reality could be more like a sphere. Maybe we went so far in the future…”
I finished for him. “… that we were in the past.”
__________
I decided not to worry about it too much. I don’t know why they gave us the recipe, I’m just glad that they did. I was concerned that there were no directions for getting back, but I hoped they knew that, somehow, we would accomplish it. If that was the case, either they were so altruistic that they risked giving up their own existence, or they knew what they were doing. Or maybe, they just didn’t care. Maybe they were at the end of time and wanted to do one final act of kindness before they collapsed into a singularity, or, came back around the other side of the sphere, or, flew outwards in a big bang… or, something akin to one of those things.
__________
I contemplated the possibility that, perhaps, we are all caught in an endless loop and will forever play out this scenario, over and over, again.
Maybe all of time is an endless loop. The universe expands from a single point, rushes outwards and forms planets, stars and galaxies; it then exists for billions of years, until finally gravity, or the curvature of space/time, or something else, entirely, brings it back down into infinite smallness, once more.
Into a single, lonely point.
Then… it does the exact same thing, again. Over and over and over.
Could it be that all of the complicated patterns of matter and energy caught within our matrix are not random, but are part of a ridiculously convoluted equation that will always be the same… always repeating? Maybe that’s what eternity is. It’s the reality that we’re all destined to endlessly duplicate what happens. Every moment. Every smile. Every tear. Every bite of food, every touch of skin… every emotion. Every day, every night, and every hour. Maybe, eternity is the fact that we’re all embedded in this cycle, together… forever.
But, one thing concerned me… what if this is the first time?
The first time that the pattern is set. The first time the universe has rushed outwards in a glorious, tumultuous jumble. And, this is the only time that free will can ever come into play. What if what is done now is the way things are going to be? For all time. The first of a series of never ending cycles.
Over, and over, and over.
More than ever, I wanted to get back to the other side. I wanted at least the chance to tell her once, so that time and time, again, I could repeat it. My words could endlessly radiate into the ether, coloring the cosmos with their message for all of forever.
I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
Chapter 68
Giddeon and I watched her prepare for the wedding. Her mother, her sister and bridesmaids were all fussing over her hair and dress and make-up. Yet, she had a look on her face that was far away. Almost distracted. Almost sad. I knew what she was thinking, because, I was thinking it, too.
We had shared another dream… the night, before.
__________
We were back on Eden, walking hand in hand towards the city. It was almost dusk. The sunset was amazing, and the red discs could be readily seen as they lost their brilliance and faded into the horizon. The greens were deep and emerald all around us, and the combined fragrance from the flowers and the trees was amazing… sweet and pure.
We crossed the threshold of the metropolis and were surrounded by that futuristic architecture. Melody looked all around in wonder and held tightly to my hand. We kissed as we walked; passersby made room for us, and they smiled at the couple in love. She put her arm around my waist, and I put my arm around her shoulders. We were in step, together, and it was a perfect fit… me against her side, and she against mine.
Sometimes, she would lean her head on my shoulder as we walked, and then, would straighten back up and smile at some new sight or sound. Her hair was flowing over my arm and down her back; each and every strand made feathery sensations on my skin, and, also, on my soul.
Finally, we arrived at the Plaza. We were early, so I ordered us two cups of chocolate from an outdoor café. I tried to pay, but the server wouldn’t take my money. I’m not sure they even used money. We ate our delicious treats, and the effect it had on my vision only made Melody seem more beautiful and more perfect, if that is even possible. We gave our containers back to the waiter and he said for us to enjoy the show… although none of the words he used was familiar, we both understood him. We walked to the edge of the plaza and gazed up at the blue moon making a grand appearance in the sky.
She was in front of me, and I had my arms around her waist. Her hands were on mine, and I periodically would bury my face in the crook of her neck and take in her sweet, sweet smell. She leaned back into me and offered me her cheek. I kissed the smooth surface, and then, the soft lobe of her ear. She sighed and gently turned back to give me a full kiss upon the lips.
The lights went out, and then, the show began.
I watched her watch in amazement. It was the same. Exactly the same show that Giddeon and I had witnessed. The music was identical. The colors and acrobatics were a perfect rendition of what we had seen, and, it was no less phenomenal. If anything, it was more so. Melody would look from the sky to me, and then, back to the sky in abject wonder. Sometimes she would grab my hand and do little hops up and down, as if so excited she couldn’t contain herself. We swayed with the music, and ‘ooohed’ and ‘aaahed’ with the crowd. The little girl was picked up and spun around, again, just like before.
The finale, was equally indescribable.
When it was over, Melody was crying at the beauty of the spectacle. She turned to me and threw herself in my arms, sobbing with joy. Finally, we broke apart and gazed into each other’s eyes.
Then, I said…
“I wanted you to see this… because, other than you, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And, I want you to know… I love you.”
She covered me with kisses and tears, and murmured over and over…
“I love you, too… I love you, too… I love you, too…”
Chapter 69
The prelude to the wedding music began to play. I went back to the boat with Giddeon because I wasn’t feeling very well. I sat there on the couch and tried to collect myself… it was the first time I had actually felt ill since I had been in the coma. After a while, I began to sweat and to tremble; Giddeon gave me some water, but it didn’t seem to help. My
stomach was in knots, and I felt slightly nauseated. I could see concern on my subconscious’ face, and then, his eyes grew wide. He grabbed my hand and put it to my nose.
“What do you smell?”
I inhaled and took in the odor of my transformed blood, along with the hint of something else. Giddeon disappeared in a flash, then, returned after a few seconds.
Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) Page 26