theMystery.doc
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He comes around, but he’s getting ready to come back in. Into life, you know. See, what we do is we recycle. If we commit suicide—not everyone—now please don’t—I don’t want any messages—uh, but if this was an unfinished life, so he’s gonna come back in.
★
W: Can you hear us?……Matt?
What?
Does she weigh three and a half pounds?
She weighs five pounds now.
She doesn’t weigh five pounds.
You can leave when you’re five pounds.
Oh, yeah, right. Below five pounds.
She was one.
She was one when she was born?
Yeah. She came four months early.
But she’s been alive for eighty-six days.
I had a girl who worked for me, and she had a baby that was only a pound and it lived. And at that time, that was—and that was, that was fifteen years ago—it was the smallest baby that ever lived. And she’s grown up now!
Can she run and—
Uh-huh! They—they do marvelous things!
W: Isn’t it incredible? Yeah, we were so surprised
because—you saw in Matt’s movie—
it seems there were like two
nurses for every one patient, you know?
It’s pretty cool. They seem to be
doing a really good job.
K: Oh, Matt that’s so beautiful!
The poor girls, you know.
They don’t know what’s going on.
The little ones? Yeah.
You can see them being affected by it.
He’s doing a good job. He’s the one,
my brother, he’s the brother who’s
{ }
He’s so responsible and—
Well, how come she had her early, do you know?
No. Really, really early on in the pregnancy
they said, This is not gonna go full term.
I don’t know why, but they they said,
{ } and she knew she was gonna
be on bed rest and she, and { }
you can if you want { } I think she’d be
a little bit of both.
And then it just so happened that
things were going along, they were much further along
than anyone thought she would be. And they just had a
routine appointment—they live in Moses Lake,
but they had an appointment to go to this place
in Spokane to meet their doctor,
they already had a standing appointment. And it just so
happened that
like right when they got there,
the water
broke.
Patricia:Hello, I am Patricia, I am the website greeter. Welcome to WebsiteGreeters.com. May I know your name please?
Visitor 1234:seeking help in a literary endeavor
Patricia:Do you have a website?
Visitor 1234:Not online currently. Name will be Bestsellingadvice.com
Visitor 1234:My name is Patty.
Patricia:It’s nice to have you on our website Patty. : )
Patricia:In order to serve you better, I need to ask you a few initial questions; would that be alright with you?
Patty:I have questions of my own, but sure.
Patricia:I see. You can ask me now. :)
Patty:We will be offering an online service to amateur writers. In a nutshell it’s this: They come to our site, are greeted by a “Professor” named “Prof. Will” ie You. After signing up with our service, they will post certain portions of works in progress. Prof. Will will read them in real time and comment on them. Is this a service you can provide?
Patricia:Our Live Operators apply the purest form of 1-to-1 customer service and sales approach, via live interaction, to provide your website visitors an experience they deserve.
Patricia:Let me have our business Development Manager contact you back to equip you with the desired details Patty. :)
Patricia:May I have your phone number and email address please?
Patty:email: professorwill@bestsellingadvice.com
Patty:All right if we try a quick sample paragraph?
Patricia:Thank you for your email address Patty.
Patty:You can call me Professor Will if you like. I will be the Professor most days. You will be the Professor only when I am on vacation, or out of town on business.
Patricia:I see. That would be great.
Patricia:I will have Our Business Development manager discuss the details with you Proffessor Will. :)
Patricia:By the way, let me go ahead and send you details on how our service works.
Professor Will:I’m sorry, I don’t have much more time Patricia, so I am going to have to sign off in just a moment. But let’s do a quick sample paragraph so you know better what I’m talking about, and if it’s something you’d like to do. All right?
Patricia:Okay, sure thing Professor Will.
Professor Will:Great. Now I will give you a sample fictional sample. All I’m looking for you to do is respond as the Professor, with your immediate thoughts. This may sound daunting, but it’s really not. I have been posing as the Professor via regular mail for years, and I never even graduated high school. No one in all that time ever suspected I was someone other than I was. So just say what comes to your mind, but try to sound professorial. No stress though, Patricia. This is just to show you what the job entails. All right?
Professor Will:I really need to wrap this up though, dear, so please respond as quickly as you can.
Patricia:My apologies Professor.
Professor Will:No sweat. All right. Ready?
Professor Will:Here we go:
★
One evening in April 2003, I went drinking in Bigfork with a guy who lived on a cherry orchard across the highway. We went to a bar called the Village Well. We stayed there for a few hours and decided to leave. It was a bit after midnight and we drove back down Highway 35. We decided to stop for one more beer at a restaurant between Bigfork and Mile Marker 18. It was called the Sitting Duck. Located right on Lake Flathead with a dock in the back, so if you are one of those rich Californians who buy up all the real estate around Flathead so you can build yourself a mansion that you use only one week a year, driving up land prices and driving the old locals out of town, during that one week while you’re motoring around the lake in your speedboat, you can throw anchor at the Sitting Duck and go inside for a bite to eat. The night I went there was the only time I had ever been, though I’d driven by it perhaps a hundred times. The place was deserted. We went over to the bar and sat down. The bartender came out from the back and said he was about to close, but agreed to pour us one beer. He was an old guy, a local, who had lived there all his life.
We got to talking about the couple from Bethel, Connecticut, who had died a few days earlier. I knew that the tour guide had not died. But all I knew was what my neighbors had told me, from gossip around town, and from the scant information reported in the local paper.
The bartender was friends with the tour guide. What’s more he had spoken to him just the day before, in the hospital where the tour guide was recovering from hypothermia. The tour guide had told him the story of what had happened. And then the bartender told me. And now I’m telling you. The story is pretty much the same as everyone knew. But there were a few very important details the bartender provided.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was high in the sky. (April 9, 2003.) The water was still. There was no wind. It was quiet. The tour guide had strapped himself to the hull, but the couple from Bethel, Connecticut, were holding fast to the edge, submerged in very cold water past their waists. They had not let him tie them down to the boat, because it had all happened very quickly and now they were afraid that if they let go their tenuous hold, even for a moment, they would sink into the water, and not have the strength to climb back up.
It was very quiet.
&
nbsp; Occasionally, the tour guide could hear the couple speaking to each other, in calm, collected voices. Most often he could not understand their words.
At times, he would try to console them, to tell them that someone would be looking for them, and that they must hold on. Someone is coming to get us, don’t you worry now, just hold on, just hold on, just hold on.
But the truth was he felt he was an intruder in the holy event which was taking place: the Great Act of their Undoing. (April 9, 2003.)
It was very quiet and he knew that he would live and that they would die, and that he would watch them die, an undesired witness, a spectator, a fly. (Is this part true?) He felt guilty. (Or is it fiction?) So he stopped speaking, he shut his mouth, he waited and tried to think of warm things. (I can’t remember.)
No one spoke. The only sounds, the water lapping softly against the sunken frame, sniffles, teeth which once chattered, now did not. All chattering had stopped. (April 9, 2003.)
It was possible, even as far out as he was, to see the large white houses which lined the shore.
And it was possible—every now & then—to hear an eighteen-wheeler on the highway shifting to a lower gear before taking the hill just before Woods Bay.
(You see, I heard this from the bartender at the Sitting Duck. He was a friend of the owner of the sunken boat, the tour guide. The tour guide told the bartender the story, and the bartender told me and now I’m telling you:
that) Just past two o’clock in the afternoon, the tour guide heard the couple from Bethel, Connecticut, speaking to each other, their voices soft and sleepy, he could not make out the words. But then he heard the wife say (sleepy and soft, as if speaking from a dream):
“At least we’re going together.”
She slipped off then, quietly, into the water:::
:::A few seconds later he heard the man do the s a m e .
.
.
X
And then I thought: Wait a second.
How am I able to breathe underwater?
Shouldn’t this be impossible? Isn’t this a Sin?
Isn’t this to be like God? Isn’t this what the Devil wants us to waste our lives striving for? Isn’t this…
IMMORTALITY?
And then suddenly I heard a voice speaking my language. It was a voice that rose to the top of all the other voices, and somehow was part of all of them, and somehow spoke through all of them as well; a soft voice, calm and tender. It said (and write this down if you want—it’s a direct quote):
★
COME WITH US
and you will
breathe
Forever.
★
WELL, I considered the offer for a moment, but then remembered that this was exactly what the Devil said to Jesus on top of a mountain when Jesus was wandering through the wilderness for forty days, before embarking on His famous journey to save mankind. And I got scared. I decided I had gone too far. So I tried to swim up to the surface—and quick!
But everything went to hell. They started grabbing me, poking and prodding me, scratching me and tearing at me, trying to rip me apart, pulling me down deeper into the water—the lower you got the darker it became—until it was all black, until I was coughing, until I was choking, freezing, falling into the deep deep deep, and the voices now were cruel, and angry, high-pitched and vile, like witches, screaming and laughing and cackling in that terrible language!
I was DROWNING—I was DYING—
I HAD MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!
……………………………………………………………………
W: I gotta have some more water. I am……[sighs]…Oh, man…You want some?
M: Yeah.
……………………………………………………………
…W:ow, it’s getting dark………………………….[yawns] It is a really cool concept… The… [sighs] cas…tle.
M: Yeah?
W: Yeah………
M: Yeah…… It’s all concept…….. I mean… if all I’m doing is—if this just—if one day I wake up and it’s all gone—
W: WHAT?!
M: Well, I mean, I don’t know, like—what’s the point? Is the point the actual Book, or is the point the soul? The brain? The Idea, the Form… beyond the Book? Who knows, but—it’s really changing my brain. It’s just—because it’s concept after concept and they just become so large and… you know? They’re so much bigger than the Book… and…… you know, it’s fun to think about… And it just seems to be… we seem to see it acting out in our lives…you know?… All the plots seem to have worked their way into life……………
W: It’s so crazy…………
M: I mean this is…
W: [yawns]
M: The unfortunate… well, the sad part to think about is that… right now, at this point, we’re just like… walking to the fair right now, you know? Holding hands. This is the—we are under the tree—this is like the—this is Bliss… Especially right now. This is really nice.
W: [laughs]
M: But what comes next, you know? That’s when…someone snatches her away.
W: Heck no, I’m not getting snatched! [knocks three times on the bed frame]
M: Well, that’s what death is. That’s what death does.
W: Well, we’re living forever.
M: That’s… That’s the Concept….
M: Well, if the—if the um…… what am I trying to say? If the purpose of the Great and the Lesser Work together
W: [yawns]
M: are to join, you know, the two halves outside of…time…People have actually dedicated their lives to working on that problem—we look—people look at them today as if they were a bunch of crackpots, but they probably were discovering some of the things we’re discovering writing —working on —
W: Yeah.
M: like that there’s something out there communicating all the time. By building, what you’re building takes on—it either becomes an entity that speaks to you or else it becomes like a transmitter that
W: [yawns]
M: whatever’s outside is able to speak to you through. I think that’s what it’s more like.
W: Yeah.
M: Yeah.
W: It’s amazing…………………………………………………………….[sound of plane] That plane is flying kind of weird, it’s more over Grand.
M: Yeah…
W: [yawns]…………………………………Yeah.………………………………………………………………………………………………….