PLAY ON

by Marilynn Halas

  “What do you mean? What do you think happened to cause my heart to seize up like that?”

  “Well, MRI stands for 'magnetic resonance imaging,' magnetic being the key word. String theory is about figuring out the way quantum physics and gravity work together, right? So gravitational pull works like magnetic pull. The nearest I can figure it, we just about put you in a cosmic slingshot by putting you inside that huge magnet with me there pulling you. I didn’t get it at the time, but what if me, from my dimension, next to you in yours, is fine, say like any of the millions of ghost stories we all grew up on. But what if the thing that bends the timeline is actually a kind of magnetic gravity. The magnetic pull of one dimension attracted to another, like a magnet and steel. The MRI is like a lightning bolt for magnetic energy and you got zapped when the two dimensions collided. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were so into physics.”

  “Yeah, I know how it is. You Yankees think you done cornered the market on intelligence.” Danny smiled with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Thomas came over right away, and Dillon presented Danny’s theory as best he could. If Danny was right, then the key to controlling and understanding this kind of episode was figuring out what it was that attracted Dillon’s dimension to the one pulling him toward Danny’s. They now understood how the timeline folded, but they still needed to know why. Danny sat quietly trying to figure it out. Thomas scratched his head.

  The guitar leaned against the wall and Dillon couldn’t resist. He walked over to it and absentmindedly plucked the strings. The vibration of each string made a different sound, depending on its thickness and tension. Thomas watched him closely and when his mouth caught up with his brain, he rose excitedly.

  “That’s it! You’re like a guitar string!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Dillon guffawed.

  “Tension is the key. The strings won’t play unless they are adjusted, or tuned, right?”

  Dillon nodded.

  “Right, so you tune the guitar by pulling the strings either tighter or more loosely around the pegs by turning the keys, or turners, at the top of the neck. The tension is the determining factor. The same is true for you. The more relaxed, or less tense, the easier it is for you to go to the other dimension. Inter-dimensional travel seems to require a relaxed mind, a strong attraction between the universes, and something to magnify the gravitational pull, like the mega magnet in the MRI machine.”

  “I think you just figured out the blueprint for a time machine,” said Dillon. He couldn’t help feeling excited, even if it was his molecules that were getting scrambled in the experiment. He figured, You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

  There was still one piece missing. What caused two dimensions to be so strongly attracted to each other that the force exerted was strong enough to bend and fold the space-time continuum? Dillon tried to think back over all his visits that were, literally, out of this world. Each one scared him, but each time he was really safer than he actually felt. What was the message he was supposed to get? Whatever it was, it seemed not only important enough to send those notes, but also to let Dillon travel through time.

  Danny pointed out that it wasn’t really just time travel. It was travel to a completely other dimension. “I hate to be insensitive, but to put it bluntly, I’m dead. You are moving way beyond your own set of strings. Ever wonder where else you could go?”

  Dillon began strumming his guitar again with a new reverence for the strings that vibrated under his fingers. They were there the whole time, but he had never considered them before. Dillon was sure the answer to figuring out the message was right in front of him too: he just couldn’t see it yet.

  October 16, 2011

  Danny hated to admit it, but he was getting irritated. He and Dillon had a lot they needed to talk about, but it seemed like forever since they could just sit around and hash things out. There was no denying that there was a good reason for that. They had a whole team in place now to help figure out what was going on, and Dillon needed to do what he needed to do to get that worked out. Then there was the small item of the heart attack. Danny most definitely did not want Dillon joining him as a ghost, so Dillon had to do whatever the doctors thought he should, so he could recover and be all right. Danny’s fondest wish for Dillon was what he used to wish for himself before he would head out on patrols: to die an old man in his warm bed, not in the line of fire.

  Still they needed to talk, and Danny had already decided today was the day. There was a lot going on and Danny knew if he waited until Tom came over later, he would lose his chance.

  “Hey, sleepyhead. Wake up.” Danny nudged Dillon, but he just rolled over. “Teenagers,” Danny mumbled. “Come on now! Wake up!”

  “No,” Dillon moaned.

  “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you sleep naked!” Danny sounded shocked and offended.

  Dillon sat bolt upright in bed and lifted the covers. After confirming that he was still wearing the T-shirt and sweatpants he had fallen asleep in the night before, Dillon glared at Danny.

  “Let’s just say it’s a good thing that you’re already a ghost,” Dillon growled, “because if looks could kill, you would die twice; and just so you know, you stink.” Dillon rubbed his eyes. When he realized it was only six o’clock, Dillon practically ignited. “Man, whatever this is, I certainly hope it couldn’t have waited.”

  “Whatever this is?” Danny repeated. “You and I have done some pretty extensive time travelling in the last few weeks and we need to debrief.”

  Dillon knew it and the truth was, he was dreading it. He didn’t know what to say to Danny. How could he possibly tell him what he thought about all the things they had seen? Seriously, what could you say to someone about witnessing the way they died, especially when they died so violently, far from home and fighting to keep us safe?

  So Dillon just said, “Thank you.” Danny looked confused by that so Dillon went on. “That place we went, that was to see how you died, right? It really scared me. I didn’t know you were a soldier killed in the war. I didn’t even know what war really was. I used to think it was a series of isolated incidents that gave reporters something to talk about. After what you showed me, I can’t shake the feeling that war is a nightmare we all get to endure together.”

  Danny had never thought about it that way. He remembered the day he came home to tell his parents he enlisted. His dad shook his hand and then went out to the barn. When Danny found him there an hour later, it was clear he had been crying. “I’m so proud of you, son,” Clint began, “but I can’t pretend I’m happy about your decision.”

  Danny’s mom had a different reaction. “No way! I forbid it! I did not go through everything I went through to have you and raise you up to be a man, a man accepted to MIT, thank you very much, just for you to throw it all away on some stupid hero complex!” Sara had thundered around the house shouting, crying and shouting some more. It took him a while to calm her down long enough to explain that MIT gave him a deferral until after his service and it was a done deal. There was nothing she could say that was going to change the fact that he made his choice. When he shipped out the following month, it was the last time he ever saw either of them.

  Still, Danny had no regrets, even now. As far as he was concerned, his nation had been under fire and there was no way he was going to sit home and let it happen again. Inspired by the passengers on the plane that went down in the Pennsylvania field, he wanted to protect his country.

  That guy, Todd Beamer, who called his wife to say good-bye and then said Let’s roll! to his buddies on Flight 93 had really impressed Danny. Beamer was a regular guy with a wife and two kids when he got on that plane, but when he realized what was happening, he stood up for his country and his family. The way Danny saw it, it was always just regular guys that stood up to make things right. Danny figured Beamer was like a modern day Minuteman from the American Revolution. Danny was proud to take his place
next to guys like that in history.

  The only problem was Danny wasn’t next to Beamer, or anyone else as far as he could tell. He felt like he was stuck. He knew he wasn’t in hell, but he didn’t think it was heaven either. In fact, the whole situation was kind of embarrassing. Danny had not planned to die at nineteen in a war he didn’t understand. He had planned to come home, be a war hero, go to MIT, and make millions.

  Dying, while certainly not his plan, was not embarrassing, but not being anywhere since then? It made him feel like a moron who couldn’t find his way to the afterlife. Danny told Dillon he was lonely, and when he heard Dillon playing his old guitar, Danny couldn’t resist reaching out. Danny could hardly bear to see what happened to his parents after he died, so mostly he stayed away. Now, Dillon was his only contact and Danny was glad to have someone to talk to.

  “Look Dillon, I think I need to be straight with you about something. I’m not the one driving this,” Danny began. “I didn’t want to take you to see how I died. Hell, no kid should see that place. I’m not leaving you notes because I can’t leave that kind of mark in this world anymore. It took nearly everything I had just to slam doors at the MRI to tell the others you were in trouble. I’m not leaving here to have tea with the angels. I’m just kind of waiting and trying to figure out what is going on right along with you. I died seven years ago in your dimension, but there is no time here in mine. For me, it may have been just a day or two. I can come back here and see what’s going on, but that’s it. I don’t have whatever it takes to just move around all the dimensions. Pretty much I can pick here or there but otherwise, I’m just along for the ride.”

  Dillon didn’t know what to think. Dillon had already accepted the fact that the notes weren’t coming from Danny; he just wasn’t the kind of guy to carve words into someone else’s palm. Still, Dillon realized that he did think that Danny knew more about this than he was telling. The idea that Danny was lonely or embarrassed had never even occurred to Dillon.

  “I think I owe you an apology. I had no clue what this was like from where you are, let’s talk.” Dillon said. They began again at the beginning and started wading through Dillon’s experience in the cave before he met up with Danny in the Afghanistan part of the dream, nightmare, or whatever that had been. Remembering the cave and the broken glass put a shiver up Dillon’s spine, but he held none of it back. At Danny’s suggestion, he even wrote down some notes to share with the others. Danny guessed the cave was some kind of portal that Dillon had to travel through to get to the other dimension, and considering the fact that Danny seemed to exist between the worlds, he was glad he didn’t have to deal with a place like that every time he came to see Dillon.

  Most of the time, Danny was in a pretty nice place; not quite heavenly, but a long way from hell. “I guess I owe you a little explanation,” Danny said. “I mean, I can look around and see your life, but you really have no idea about my life and how it is when I’m not here. I can visit you, but you can’t exactly visit me.” Dillon nodded for Danny to go on.

  “Well, you saw how I died, so I guess I’ll start with what happened next, on the other side. For me, dying was like a shock followed by peace like I’ve never known. I mean, you think that you’re gonna have a hard time letting go of this life; but it’s not like that.” Danny paused to collect his thoughts. “When the moment came for me, I was shocked, but a moment later I felt such peace that I really didn’t even want to come back. It felt like I didn’t have to let go of my family and friends; I just didn’t have to worry about anything anymore. There isn’t really a separation for me. I can still be with them. What I learned is that there is a huge separation for them. I can visit, but they can’t and they can’t even find peace when they do feel like I’m there.”

  Dillon looked away. He had never thought about it like that before.

  Danny went on. “I was totally amazed the first time I went back to my family’s farm. I mean, I guess I should have figured that they’d be upset, but I never figured that they would look more dead than I was.”

  “What do you mean?” Dillon asked.

  “”What I mean is that they raised me to be a fighter, so I never figured them for quitters. That was the first time there was no peace on this side. Up until then, that awesome feeling of everything being fantastic was just building and building, but once I saw how destroyed my parents were, it was like someone let the air out of my balloon. No more riding high.”

  Danny ran his hand through his thick, brown hair.

  “Anyway, since then, I’m kinda stuck,” Danny sighed. “I can’t go back, but I can’t go forward either. I can’t leave them like that and now I have waited so long, I don’t know how to let go again. So, pretty much, when I’m not here, I’m hanging out in a place that’s like a park. The sunshine is warm and the grass is green and the flowers are beautiful. There is a live oak tree next to a brook and I like the shade it casts over the water. Sometimes I can even smell barbeque and hear the laughter of family reunions that must be happening nearby. I can hear them calling to each other, but I can’t see them. Truth is, it’s a little lonely. Nice and all, but I guess it will be a while before I’m having a reunion with my family and anyway, that’s cool. I seriously don’t want to rush them.”

  Dillon was amazed. Danny shrugged and said, “Just so you know, I’d have preferred just telling you I was a soldier killed on patrol in Afghanistan. I still don’t like that you saw all that. I was stupid. I knew never to take my eye off the bad guys, but I did and we all paid for it. I never saw it from that angle before. I didn’t know my buddies surrounded me like that. I was such a mess. I can’t believe they carried me out. I bet the whole thing made them sick.”

  For the first time in this whole conversation, Dillon knew exactly what to say. “Maybe that’s why we were there. Maybe whoever or whatever is driving this has a message for both of us. I mean, all along we both figured this was just happening to me, but what if we're missing the point. This is happening to both of us. Seeing what happened in Afghanistan must have been as important for you as it was for me, so what did we learn?”

  “I learned that my buddies really cared about my sorry ass even though I was only over there for a few weeks and they barely even knew me. I thought I was on my own, but I really never was,” Danny said.

  “What if that’s still true? What if, right now, you feel like you’re on your own, but there is help when you need it? If everything happens for a reason, then maybe that’s part of what you needed from that tour of your last day on earth. As for me, it’s not that complicated. I needed to know you better, and seeing how you lived and died makes me feel like we can handle anything together. The truth is, Danny, you aren’t alone and neither am I; we’re going to stick together.”

  October 17, 2011

  The next morning everyone gathered at Dillon’s father’s place. Even Tom got the day off school because his dad figured this was at least as educational as anything happening at school that day. Everyone sat around the kitchen table, eating donuts and drinking coffee.

  “That better be decaf,” Maggie chided Dillon, and then she took the cup out of Ryan’s hand. “I know yours isn’t.” She gave Ryan a smile as she poured it down the drain and refilled Ryan’s cup with "unleaded."

  “Okay, so we are here today to figure out what happened when Dillon was in the hospital.” Thomas had wanted to videotape the session, but Ryan refused. The last thing he wanted was his son labeled a nut online someday. The adults wanted to give Dillon some time to recover, but Dillon was anxious to get back to solving the puzzle. He began by telling everyone the full story about Danny and the day he died, and Maggie was visibly shaken.

  “He was just nineteen? Somehow I never thought of him that way. Just a kid, really. His poor mother. Now he feels stuck? Not here, not yet in heaven? Just stuck?” Danny looked at Dillon’s mom and smiled.

  “Tell her I’m okay. I don’t need two mamas worried over me.”

  Dillon told
her and tried to steer the conversation back to the night he had the heart attack.

  “The last thing I remember from the hospital was feeling really tired and wishing the MRI was over. The noise and close quarters were really starting to get to me.”

  “I’m warning you, if you tell them I sang to you, I will haunt you for the rest of your long and happy life,” Danny threatened, and Dillon smiled.

  “Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was getting real up-close and personal with claustrophobia. I started sweating and feeling sick and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.” Ryan put his hand over Maggie’s. It was hard for his parents to hear this.

  “Then you guys pulled me out of the machine and I felt like I had a herd of elephants dancing on my chest. In a way, in that moment, passing out was a welcomed relief. I don’t really know what happened at the hospital after that, and I’m good with never knowing, but the next thing that happened for me was something I never expected and at first, I thought it meant that I must be dead.”

  Dillon took a bite of his donut to stall. He was trying to get his emotions a little better under control and it wasn’t easy. “I opened my eyes in a nice warm bed, but it wasn’t at home or in the hospital. It was Grandma’s old house in the Catskills. I could even hear her humming downstairs and setting the table.” Dillon went on to tell them about the visit, the chicken potpie, and the message from Uncle Joe.

  Maggie had tears in her eyes just thinking about her mom and brother. Danny closed his eyes. Oh man, what he wouldn’t give for some of that. There were a lot of people he would like to see, and sitting at his Gram’s house, having dinner, sounded great. Maybe he would even eat too many biscuits, ‘cause really, why should he worry about cholesterol now? Heaven.

  “Mom? Uncle Joe is real worried about you.” Maggie turned red and looked away. “He wants you to know that everything is okay and that you don’t need to be so hard on yourself, or something like that. What was he talking about?” Dillon looked confused.