Reasons Only Time Allows

by Micah Thomas

  “Nope. My mind is empty except for my dumb-ass thoughts. Like, I feel pretty good and wonder if they have internet. I’d kinda like to email my dad. Maybe even my girlfriend.”

  Cassie laughed. “You have a girlfriend? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Dude has a fiancé,” Henry clarified. “He’s full of mysteries.”

  They ate and laughed, and Henry led Thelon over to the showers, chatting with him as he luxuriated. Henry was right, the shower is excellent. Sunlight through the open roof, smooth tiles beneath his feet, high-pressure hot water steamed over him. He closed his eyes and a thought came to him: I took a night walk, didn’t I? The thought disappeared, but the worry remained. Something had happened.

  After his shower, Thelon joined up with Cassie and Henry in the sitting room of the big house. Cynthia had gathered them with the promise of full disclosure. This time, Cassie, Henry, and Thelon sat together on the long sofa, holding each other’s hands as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

  The tone of the room was church camp. Cynthia stood at a lectern brought in by strong Lena, who sat in the high-backed chair facing the couch.

  Cynthia began, “We’ve known what this place is for an exceedingly long time, but this is not where it all began and it’s time you know. There was, many years ago, in the year of our Lord 1970, a series experiments with synthesized derivatives of Ibogaine. The experiments were funded by the Soviet government, who sought any and all things mind control, remote viewing, extra sensory perceptions, and incidentally, cures and causes of chemical addiction. The work was fruitless in their superficial goals, but continued clandestinely with the help of scientists dedicated to finding the truths these compounds revealed. I was among them, joined by my dearest doctors Achebe and Butchko, whose portraits you see behind me. Many years later, after the loss of my friends to political imprisonment, I returned to the States and found allies performing similar work with new pharmacology. I brought to them my notes and data and together, we formed what would be called Black Star.”

  She paused and took a long drink of water. To Thelon, she seemed emotional, near tears like this disclosure and recollection caused her pain.

  “And so we continued, and our disciplines veered from the formal sciences of our pedigrees and became spiritual. The sweet lovers, Xavi and Lilly—both now deceased—contributed the map I now follow. Their work unlocked the understanding we so labored against. How wrong we were for all those years, focusing on symptoms and never seeing the whole picture.”

  Cassie sat, seemingly caught in rapt attention. Thelon felt Henry’s hand sweating in his palm, but he, too, was focused. They’re just gonna sit and listen?

  Dude.

  What?

  Hey.

  Thelon blurted, “Aaaah.”

  Hush. Don’t give it away.

  Who said that?

  It’s me. Henry.

  And me, Cassie.

  You sound the same. Like my own voice.

  Oh yeah?

  Yeah.

  Cynthia shook her head, then continued in a somewhat stronger voice, “What we saw was terrible. We saw time break. Well, first we saw time for what it is. I’ll do the best I can using analogies, but please, hold your questions—I presume there will be many.” She cleared her throat.

  She has a booger in her nose, and it keeps coming out and then sucking back in.

  It’s totally gonna fall out.

  What?

  “Ah, yes. We perceived that which is time,” said Cynthia. “As it is often stated in our circle, time is change. And also, time is space. It’s observed by us as changes in state, position, or relationship. A processional Matryoshka dolls, the smallest in motion, and as below, so above, the largest in motion. This is a conventional description of time, but this is only the behavior of observable time, not what time is. All things observed through the human apparatus, the technological extension of those senses, is a mere surface description of the world and not the world itself.”

  Thelon sucked in a breath. He’d heard this before. Nestor—or had it been T?—told him as much. The ghost is not the thing. The image is not the thing.

  I’m glad you understand it.

  Yeah. I’m confused as fuck.

  Uh oh. I’m going to fart. I’m sorry. It’s gonna be a bad one.

  “Externalism and presentism are all true, but neither is the world,” Cynthia went on. “They are words. Much of time is about measurement, yes? Accuracy of measurements. Measurement of distance, speed, and time. No description of time is time.”

  Cassie looked hypnotized. Henry as well.

  Thelon looked at them and back to Cynthia, who had no idea they chatted in this secret communication. Henry farted and it did stink.

  “All of this is true, and not true,” she kept going. “There are many worlds. This—all of this and outside of this—” she raised her arms to the sky, “is an organism. The matrix of time and space and not space lives through all things. Time is an attribute of the cell walls binding it together. We exist in a region within this rough beast, too small to be of consequence. But like a cancer in the brain, our experiment with time propagated, metastasized a change through the whole. Cell walls began to burst, leaking into each other. The EP is now the heart of that cancer—a tumorous lump spreading disease. Things are bleeding through into our world that have no place here. Beings from dimensions outside of our physical apparatus to comprehend. Our dreamers have been in meditation around the clock to stem the bleeding, but we are insufficient. There are two powerful entities on the other side of the EP.”

  I’ll take the Great Mystery for $500.

  Who is Henry and Cassie?

  Hush!

  Cynthia pressed her lips and narrowed her gray eyes, peering deep into Thelon as if to urge his understanding. Thelon, for his part, nodded as if he understood—or was at least following. In some way, he was getting the gist. This was the problem before him. This is the mission, should you accept it. Now something about self-destruct, right?

  You’re funny.

  Stop eavesdropping on me.

  We can’t help it!

  “The scale is improbable. Entire universes with entirely different physics, maths, planar realities. What we’ve done is monstrous. Creation is not anthropocentric, but like our collective industrial actions having global climate impact, so too did our metaphysical actions. But there is hope. All of the things which have transpired—the wounds we cut—can be healed, but we must close the so-called Energy Portal, despite the ostensible good it brings the people of our world. Before I close in prayer, do you have any questions at this time?”

  The spell binding Cassie, Henry, and Thelon broke, and they freed their hands from each other’s. Henry rubbed his palms over his jeans to dry, but said nothing.

  Cassie clapped. “Wow. Hot damn. Just wow.”

  Cynthia smiled and Thelon saw something of a salesman in that. She’s giving a pitch. This is a fucking pitch. Can you hear me? His friends must have turned off their telepathy.

  Stepping away from the podium, Cynthia knelt at the coffee table across from the friends. “You’ve seen wondrous things on your way to us. Terrifying things. We know this, but you have not—none of you—surrendered your reasoning. This is not a rational act. This is not something you can think to yourself, ‘I accept this.’ No. For you to internalize the acceptance on an energetic level, you must see. We have been tasked with opening your eyes.”

  “By who?” Cassie blurted, then covered her mouth.

  Cynthia raised her hand. “All in appropriate time, Cassandra.” She gestured to Lena, “Do you feel okay to share? This is a story about healing. About integration. This is an illustration of what changes, though in a different vector, you will take on within the coming days.”

  Lena stood at the podium and pulled her long braid over her shoulder. “Hi, as you know, my name is Lena, but what you don’t know is that I’ve been with Cynthia since the 80s. I was a professor
of parapsychology when she rounded me up, and back then, my name was Denzel and I looked very different from the woman you see today.” She stepped away from the podium and did a little turn like she was on a catwalk.

  “Brava!” said Cynthia, who still knelt but had turned to face Lena.

  Cassie clapped again, this time joined by Henry, and half-heartedly by Thelon, who was growing increasingly confused.

  Lena retook the podium. “While I have the deepest of sympathies for my trans brothers and sisters out in the world today, my story is different. As Cynthia so lovingly articulated, my story—and I’ll keep it brief—is about integration and healing. So, I was an unhappy man. My field of study was all but openly mocked, and I was losing hope. Every day, I felt an alienation from myself I could not pinpoint. Without steering in any direction, I began the experimentation cycle with Cynthia and under the direction of our beloved Xavi. Here is the relevant piece, which I hope moves you towards understanding.”

  She unfastened her dress and let it fall to the ground. Beneath, she wore no undergarments. “This is my body as it existed in more timelines than I can count. Though I was born into a man’s flesh,” she raised her arms and gestured to her body, “slowly, over months of taking our unique pharmacology, I journeyed outside of this time. I saw my others, their female forms, and their joy. Eventually, I was no observer. I inhabited those places and times. While I was confused and unable to access all their memories and therefore unable to participate in their lives, I felt my truth across instances solidify.”

  Thelon’s jaw worked. This was something he could relate to.

  “Integration. We saw dissociation and rejection was a common route of transit. The parts of us we found incompatible with a locked-in vision became exiles and the source of our daily energetic misalignment. In a platitude, one must live their truth—this is literal. We are carrying all ourselves, but we found—I found—release of the rational, of the illusion of control over totality; acceptance of selves led to the creation of a hook. Through the dreaming we do, through envelopes of healing which are required to close this Energy Portal, my hook pulled the form of my others into the manifestation of a new body. This flesh you see is not the product of surgery or hormone therapy.”

  She dressed herself once more. “You will take our compounds and find your others. You will be faced with the choice to reject those parts you cannot bear to see. If you do that, I will understand, but you will doom the world. If you can find it within yourself to accept, embrace, and hook your attention to your entirety of being, you will be complete. That is all I have to say. Please be well and love yourselves.”

  Lena sat again in the chair near the podium, face flushed down to her neck.

  Cassie stood and stepped around Cynthia. “Can I give you a hug?”

  “Yes. Please,” Lena agreed and stood to accept the embrace.

  “Thank you, Lena,” Cynthia said and stood up herself. “Enough talking for today. Let these words and lessons sink into your bodies. Knowledge is physical here. The words are only descriptions, after all. Stand. All of you, stretch and shake like a dog letting go of tension.”

  Thelon obeyed and followed Henry’s direction as he did a noodle-arm-shake in front of his body. They limp-arm tickled each other, and Cassie laughed at their cutting up.

  This was a lot for all of them to take in, but it was time to play and then pick herbs from the garden to help make the meal they would all later eat. Thelon felt good and saw himself as he had been along the journey here: despairing, doubting, and scared. I’m better, but the good times aren’t going to last. Henry, Cassie, and I are going to be faced with some shit and it’s going to hurt. He knew all of this and even without talking about it, he believed his friends knew it, too. Dread beneath the calm, a foul fear lurked on the horizon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER LUNCH, THELON, Henry, Cassie, and Cat walked the grounds. Cat pounced at tall grasses to the side of worn dirt trails. They came to a gentle brook and Henry showed Cassie how to catch crawdads—though she called them crayfish.

  With no interest in getting wet, Thelon and Cat strolled away from the lovers, letting them giggle and be silly together. “I guess it’s just you and me, Cat.” He experienced the briefest of recollections that he’d talked to the animal before.

  Once more, he had no opportunity to examine the thought as Cat darted out of sight into tall grass.

  “Cat! Kitty, kitty? Come back.” He followed into the grass where he saw her disappear. Cat sniffed around a grotesque corpse of a rotting dog. Flies, iridescent rainbows of wings and eyes, buzzed loud in his head, and white maggots writhed in sickly sweet flesh. “Oh, no, Cat. Get away from that. Gross.”

  Thelon picked up the squirming cat and his attention was pulled horribly to the body. Thelon could not turn away. The details of bone, sinew, decomposition odors, a bronze name tag in the shape of a bone imprinted with the letters “PD” blotted out the rest of the sunlit scene. He heard his throat make a squawking sound as he retched up his lunch.

  “Thelon!” Cassie called..

  He shook his head and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The sick feeling in his belly remained. This told Thelon something about this place, but the lesson remained outside of his ability to speak it into existence.

  Thelon held Cat and she attempted to climb up his chest to his shoulders as he rejoined his friends with their wet pant legs. They walked back around the looping trail to the main yard, which now housed a newly-risen tent.

  “What is this?” Henry asked.

  Cassie knew. “This is a sweat lodge. You know, I’m not surprised, given the hippie dopiness of these people. A New Age dude in Arizona killed some folks with one of these a few years ago.”

  “Shit,” Thelon said and saw Cynthia up on the main house porch.

  She waved him over with a finger as if to say, Just you, Thelon. He left his friends to poke about the tent and interact with the old folks putting on the fire and steam.

  Cynthia took him inside. “A word, Thelon.”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Your friends are remarkable people.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” As he stood in the kitchen with Cynthia, a ringing—an electronic whine. It was a high pitch like he’d been too close to a gunshot. He tried to pop his ears by moving his jaw, but he also wanted to listen, to give Cynthia his attention.

  “They aren’t like you, Thelon. No one is like you, except you.”

  He could barely hear her. “What? What are you saying?”

  Thelon had to read her lips because he simply could not hear.

  “Nestor,” she said.

  Dizziness claimed Thelon and he fainted there in the kitchen. His forehead smacked the countertop as he went down into the black nothing of unconsciousness.

  ~

  When he awoke, he was stretched out on the chaise lounge in the lecture room. Cassie held an icepack to his head.

  “Oh, hi. Do you know what day it is?” she asked. “Wait, that’s a bad one. I don’t know what day it is either.”

  “I’m fine. I’m really fine,” Thelon said and took the icepack from her hands and touched the bandage along his forehead. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, you took a fall, dude,” she said.

  Henry was with them. “Hey, come with me for a sec. Boys’ bathroom break, okay?”

  Thelon steadied himself and followed Henry to the bathroom.

  “Dude, this place is fucking weird,” Henry said as he sat Thelon down on the toilet.

  “Yeah, I’m getting that.” Thelon scratched at his beard. “Something’s going to happen tonight, isn’t it?”

  Henry shrugged. “Did you know they have a hole in the ground? A fucking pit. When we asked these old farts what it was for, they just laughed and laughed.”

  “It’s probably for a pig roast or something. You bury a pig and dig it up later.”

  “Ugh, one: that’s gross. Two, there’s no pig that big. There’s more. T
hey have a bunch of tents with people sleeping in them. Big tents. Think circus tents.”

  “So what?”

  “We asked again, ‘what is this stuff?’ They said the people inside were dreaming.”

  “Again, man, what’s the big deal? Like, we know they are into weird shit.”

  “I—both Cassie and me—felt something weird.”

  “Spooky weird?”

  “Big time.”

  “Are you boys done playing with each other?” Cassie shouted through the door. “It’s time for another sermon or some shit out here.”

  Henry raised an eyebrow. “Guess we are about to find out, dude.”

  The guys came back to the room where Cassie was sitting with Cynthia and Lena. Eyes wide, Cassie held back bemusement as she listened, nodding as needed.

  She coughed to interrupt Lena. “Guys, uh…guys, you need to hear this.”

  Henry sat down next to her. Thelon noticed the closeness; thigh to thigh. It wasn’t like Henry put his arm around her, but Thelon chuckled whenever he saw the signs of their affection now. He stood back behind the couch, barely containing the urge to pace.

  Lena continued, “You’ve noticed, perhaps, that there is an energy to this place. As we were telling Cassandra, Cahokia is the center of an indigenous civilization predating all known nations and communities at the point of colonizer contact. Cahokia, the Mississippian mound builders.”

  Henry said, “Are you going to spin a native burial ground thing?”

  A clackity, paws-on-wood-floors sound rattled Thelon and in bounded a dog. It licked his shoes and he instinctively reached down to pet it. Almost immediately, he read the tag: PD. He whispered, “This dog was dead.”

  Cassie said, “Okay, the sweat lodge. Isn’t that a bit like cultural appropriation?”

  Cynthia took the answer. “It was not one of our original practices. We had assistance.”

  “From who?”

  “All in due time,” Cynthia responded.

  Lena kept the conversation on track. “No, no. I’m explaining our land acknowledgment, but this place is special.”