Notopia

  This time she could see an iron stairway. She was ascending the steps that spiraled upward, similar to what she thought one might find in a lighthouse. It ended in a loft area that had wooden floors and a large metal cylinder in the center that reached the ceiling in height. Also, in the room, were a few wooden boxes, some unique pottery, and some good-sized flat stone tiles. Drawn to the stone tiles, she could not see well through the years of dust, but she did see the same triangle shapes that were on Roger’s documents. Four stone tiles were all covered with these wedge-shaped impressions, but there were no clues as to the meaning. The wooden boxes were empty, and she guessed that these items had been transported here in those boxes.

  She turned her focus to the two, nearly three-foot-tall clay pots. Inside the pots, she found several rolled up papers or parchments. Being unable to interact with the objects she encountered during her vision physically, she couldn’t pull the documents out of the jars. There was also one small intricately carved clay pot. It looked more like a keepsake pot one might put jewelry or other small precious items into. There was a name on the lid, Pandora. She looked again at the large metal cylinder in the middle of the room and found some markings of sorts on it, but her journey was ending, and her focus was being disturbed from inside her conscious mind.

  ***

  The bed was not as comfortable as before, and Gwen was suddenly no longer in Notopia and not even in a bed. She sat in her car in her garage. “NO! Not now!”

  ***

  Shelly burst into the basement where she found Charles was waiting and Leo was now with him. “That thing was just here! Just around the corner and down the street at that two-story blue house. The dreams there fought with it, and it got sucked into the ground as a house vanished. They told me what happened, and two dreams got killed. I took them to the museum and dropped them off and told them you would come around to talk to them, Leo.”

  “I certainly will. Meanwhile, you and Charles should go back and see if that thing comes back. My guess is it will have to dig its way up,” Leo said.

  “What about Enrique? He should be here soon,” Charles said.

  “You guys keep checking back here for him, and when he shows up, send him to the museum to find me. We will then contact the other fire stations and see if we can get an around-the-clock-watch on that lot. Hopefully, with what I learn from those dreams, we can create a weapon or even a cage of sorts to contain it as soon as it comes back,” Leo said.

  Within minutes of their departure, Enrique stumbled into the basement. His arms were loaded with bags of cleaning solutions, alcohol, powders, anything he could think of that might be useful as a killing agent. He unloaded the bags on the table and realized he was alone for now. Sure that his friends would be back, he decided to begin some experiments on the green ooze samples. He ran back out to his car to get the rest of his supplies, leaving the door open behind him so he could bring everything inside in one trip. When he returned, the foul smell of the samples began to get to him, and he looked around the room for a particle mask. He found a small box of them and turned back to the table.

  “Those won’t help you,” a gravelly voice said.

  Enrique dropped what was in his hands, and fronted Urkabis. He couldn’t run as the creature was between him and both exits. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I’m a little surprised you even speak,” Urkabis said. “I followed your friend here to this house. I’m here to rid Notopia of dreams.”

  “I am not a dream,” Enrique replied, “so be gone with you. You have no business here.”

  “I sense the fear of death in you human. It is quite strong and intoxicating. I have only known a few of you so far. Relax, I am not here to kill humans, yet.”

  “Yet? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “All in due time, my corpuscular friend.” In a flash, Urkabis grasped Enrique around the torso and neck, lifting him off the ground.

  “You just said you are not here to kill me, so put me down!”

  “You should be proud of yourself, Enrique. I believe that is your name. Your dream has not arrived in Notopia, but I must tell you, the collective is quite afraid of your dream. Apparently, others have had similar dreams, and the collective did not recognize the damage your dream could do until your museum painting took shape.”

  “My dream is not dangerous, my dream is to put an end to the rich versus poor, the black versus white, the craziness of trying to immigrate a culture and not just immigrate a person. An end to being assimilated or being ostracized. These useless conflicts only serve to suppress one group and generate fear and animosity that survives generations.”.

  “HAH! Amazing that you are so right, and yet, you are aware of so little! That fear is exactly what the collective is charged with maintaining on this planet of yours. Do you really think the collective is a mysterious conglomeration of human intelligence and human emotions stored in one place? Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth has been kept hidden from your species for thousands of years, yet, despite your ignorance of the situation, you have stumbled on a very disarming weapon against it.”

  “It is true that I do not understand what you are babbling about, but either kill me or let me go!”

  “Oh, I’m not going to kill you. But I will alter your mind enough to keep you from returning to this place. Then, your dream will die on its own.”

  With the other hand, Urkabis inserted a portion of his bony finger into Enrique’s ear. He screamed in pain, kicking and flailing about until he passed out from it all. Urkabis twisted a bit more before letting him drop in a heap on the floor. Blood ran from his ear onto the floor, and Urkabis left him there, twitching.

  ***

  “I’m sure this is the right place, Charles,” Shelly said. “There is the broken fence, and you can see tire tracks right up to the property edge.”

  The lot in front of them was barren except for the grass that had begun to sprout. Both Charles and Shelly began to search, and it wasn’t long before they smelled the familiar stench, located a hole, and some bits of the green ooze. Charles knelt and put some in a glass container. “Well, it’s not dead, that’s for sure.”

  “I wonder what is next on its agenda,” Shelly said. “Let’s head back and wait for Enrique.”

  Charles agreed and off they went. Along the way, they noticed how dark things were. There were noticeably fewer houses, and most of the dreams were not about to turn on any lights to draw attention to themselves.

  “Charles, I hate to ask this. Do you think if we were able to kill Roger that this thing would vanish as well?” Shelly asked.

  “If this thing is his dream, and I believe it is, then the only other way is to induce a complete mental breakdown, greater than any drug-induced paranoia could do.”

  “So, we have to find him in real life and kill him.”

  “I am afraid so Shelly; I don’t know of any other options.”

  They pulled up in front of Leo’s house, directly behind Enrique’s car. “I’m glad he is here Charles. I hope he has more for us inside. Damn, I can still smell that odor.”

  Chapter 17

  It had taken Roger three hours to make the drive to the Santa Cruz area. Throughout the trip, he tried to think of more options for his plan and decided there were none. He knew now that his attempt to bring humanity into a balance with nature and the planet was inherently flawed. Humanity was already “in balance.” Humanity was to be the vehicle that the earth would use to venture into the galaxy. To do that, it must be free to innovate and create. Sure, there would be problems along the way. Failures in development on small and grand scales would litter the path. The earth has always lost life forms that either gave way to something more complex or something more adept. This was no different, except that this time the ingenuity came from the creature and not from mother earth. The earth would now need to deal with a creature that could innovate faster than she. Roger knew his drea
m was now counter to the survival of the planet and there was only one way to make things right.

  Roger had not thought of suicide before. He knew it was considered by some to be a selfish act and even a cowardly act, but he also knew that, for most people, it was a common result of depression. Once the throes of depression have sunk into the consciousness that deeply, it affects the person’s ability to make reasonable decisions, even when he or she understands what is logically true. Their twisted mind can acknowledge every detail around them; they can even function in their job at extremely high levels. However, inside they are convinced that the life they lead is not worth the energy being expended to continue.

  In Roger’s case, he believed that his life facilitated that of Urkabis and that if he remained alive, Urkabis would live too. He also knew Urkabis would not stay in Notopia. Once the dreams were dead there, it would come to earth and continue its slaughter, where now the victims would be people.

  The walking bridge was empty, and he was alone. This was not about love, not about pity, or self-loathing. It was war with an enemy from his mind that was hell-bent on killing, and this was the only weapon he had. He tied the rope securely to the railings and around his neck. He climbed over the side, slowly lowered himself down, and released his hold upon the bridge.

  ***

  Leo spent a good deal of time talking with Strata and company, and as Nimbus recovered, he was also able to convey his version of events as well. The more Leo listened, the fonder he found himself of this little troupe, and he offered his home to them as a hiding place any time they felt the need. He assured them that many people were working on methods to stop Urkabis, and it wouldn’t be long now.

  Leo returned to his home and went directly to the basement. There, he found Charles at the table; Shelly was seated on the floor holding Enrique’s head in her lap.

  “What the hell happened?” Leo said.

  “We found him this way,” Shelly said, half crying. “We are sure Urkabis did something to his brain. He isn’t dead, and he seems a bit calmer now than when we first got here.”

  “It shouldn’t be able to hurt us,” Charles said. “I don’t think this thing is a part of Notopia.”

  Leo knelt to comfort Shelly and tried to get a read on Enrique’s pulse. No sooner had he touched him Enrique vanished back to the real world. Shelly cried and hugged Leo. “He is alive, Shelly. He may not ever make it back to Notopia, but he is alive.”

  “That’s it!” Charles said. “It only kills dreams. It was able to injure Enrique but only to the point that he would cease to have a dream.”

  “That means nothing here is safe,” Shelly said.

  Chapter 18

  For Delilah and Paul, life was not the same as before. Existence was even a barely applicable term as that implied a human definition. They had become that part of light that physics defines as not quite a particle and certainly not a wave. They had become both the rock so immense that God himself can’t lift and the sound the tree makes when it crashes to the forest floor in the woods with no one around.

  “The universe is quite amazing when viewed from inside a star, and more wondrous still form inside the galactic center,” Paul said.

  “To live with such exciting newness has certainly made every trial I ever faced as a person less than trivial,” Delilah said, and she hugged Paul while they gazed and explored the inner workings of a black hole. “I never want to lose touch with any of my past Paul. Every bit of strength I gained from those encounters gave me the impetus to be here now. I feel like the life on earth was like the life in the womb, and I am just newborn into this reality.”

  “Delilah you are correct.” Paul always liked saying that. “Do you hear the others trying to talk to us? It’s like we can’t quite speak the language and they can’t quite understand us. Yet, we are one with them all.”

  “Yes, I hear them the same way. It will happen soon, I can tell. I also hear our friend Gwen. She is struggling so much,” Delilah sighed.

  “Poor Roger will be very disappointed to learn his scheme has a flaw.”

  “Paul, I am amazed at how long you waited for me.”

  “Hardly seems like any time at all now, my love.”

  “It’s a good thing you were true to me, even when I was so unsure because there are no secrets here.”

  “How could I not? It was always clear to me that the ecstatic sensations in our pool of lovemaking were the springboard for our minds to reach this level. You were certainly my high dive.”

  “Pfft. Your puns are over the top,” Delilah giggled, “but you always did like the deep end.”

  ***

  Gwen planted herself in front of her computer and began to search for info regarding the hieroglyphs, the triangle markings, anything on Shemyaza, and a few other words she could remember from the papers. A biblical character named Enoch in the book of Genesis first wrote about this Shemyaza. She kept reading and learned that Enoch had been regarded by God to have lived such a “good” life that he was summoned to visit heaven and he wrote about his adventure.

  Even though his writings are were found in the same clay pots as the writings of Moses, they fall short of receiving the same holy status. Thus, his writings were regarded as rubbish and don’t appear in the bible.

  Wait a minute, clay pots? Were these the very same clay pots that were in the museum attic space from her vision? Indeed, the pictures were quite similar. In reading about Shemyaza, she learned he was an angel that God assigned to head up a team of two hundred angels to “watch” the earth and all the happenings and report to God. Yikes! She thought as she read on and learned how badly things went awry, and God had to remove Shemyaza and his cohorts. She saw a link to “early writings” on the page and clicked on it.

  The title read “cuneiform,” and the pictures were the very same triangle shapes she had seen on the tablets. It was the earliest known form of written records for mankind. Did these cuneiform markings somehow describe Notopia? Did Enoch visit Notopia as well? But why, and why are some of his scrolls stored in the museum attic? What is the metal cylinder? And what in the world did Pandora have to do with all this? There, she went with all her questions again.

  Gwen felt certain there had to be a connection for all of this. However, the most pressing matter now was how to stop Urkabis. She recognized that Urkabis evolved slightly with each appearance but attributed that to the creativity of Roger. Now that Roger knows Urkabis is a bad idea, perhaps it will cease after it is vanquished the next time.

  ***

  It would certainly help to have Roger with her to go through all this material. She tried to call him, but no one answered. Slightly frustrated, as she had told him to stay put, she returned to her car to go back to see him. She kept calling his phone along the way and began to worry about him. Arriving at his house, she immediately noticed his car was gone. She called again.

  “Hello,” she heard, but it wasn’t Roger’s voice.

  “Roger? It doesn’t sound like you. Where are you or, who is this?” she said.

  “Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s miss. I’m Officer Todd Baker. Can I have your name and your affiliation with Roger?”

  Fearing the worst, Gwen said, “No…please no… I am his friend. I am Gwen Parker. What has he done, is he in trouble?”

  “We are still trying to figure that out. Can I get your address? and I would also appreciate anything you could tell me?”

  Gwen knew he was gone. She told the officer everything she could but knowing that Notopia could not be part of it made things seem very uncomplicated. Gwen cooperated with the officer, and he assured her they would talk again.

  Gwen relaxed her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. A tissue soaked up the tears and the reality that Roger was dead began to settle in. She knew what he had done was an attempt to save not just Notopia but rather the whole world as well. She could hardly fault him for that. It is an obscure line between a re
ckless action and a noble deed, and it seems only ignorance keeps them apart.

  Notopia had now taken Roger, Paul, and Delilah from her life. It had also thrust her into an emotional relationship with a man she barely knew and challenged her entire concept of the universe where she lived. Then, there was Urkabis who threatened to destroy absolutely everything. I don’t ever want to hear anyone say they are having a bad day ever again.

  Gwen gripped the steering wheel with one hand and turned the key with the other as she wished to return home and see what more she could find via the computer.

  ***

  She opened her eyes and instantly found the unmistakable deep brown eyes of Leo’s there looking back at her. Anyone else would have startled her, but his eyes were kind, gentle, and alluring enough to swim in.

  “Welcome back, love,” he said in a very tranquil manner. “Yes, I have been watching you sleep. I needed you, and I have been waiting. You have been sleeping for quite a while, and although the urgency of things grows every second, I could not bring myself to wake you.”

  “I have been sleeping here? Notopia hardly seems like a place where people sleep.”

  “Gwen, I never thought about it before. I don’t know if I have ever slept here or if anyone I know has either until now.”

  “Leo … Roger took his life. He realized what that horrible thing of his was doing, and he was trying to stop it. He felt so incredibly bad and thought it was the only way to stop it.” Gwen then rolled into his arms.

  “Gwen, you saw the good in Roger that we never did. I am sorry for your loss,” Leo replied, holding her gently. “But Urkabis remains.”