Notopia

by Michael Vallimont

  Tunnel? It can’t be? Can it? Roger figured the entrance from his old cellar collapsed when the house folded into the ground, but that would stop at the edge of the street. He had tunneled all the way to the basement of the museum. He wondered if the entrance he made was included in the grid by the beacon? He didn’t remember seeing any sectors other than those around and above the museum on the cylinder control panel. He jumped to his feet and ran to the museum. He was going to have to go inside and see for himself, and he’d better check now before all the dreams arrived.

  Roger snuck around the main entrance looking for any sign of Urkabis or Dharma. He moved slowly, and once inside, he hid behind everything he could. Finally, he could see across the floor, and the door to the attic was ajar. He was relieved as he took this to mean they were probably up there trying to decipher the cylinder, and he could get into the basement undetected.

  He made his way quietly down the stairs and reached the basement. He slowly moved to the hidden opening, and as he feared, the beacon didn’t block it. Perhaps Urkabis didn’t know of it, and he hoped he wasn’t leading him to a way out. He reached the back of the room and found the bookshelf that had stood hiding the entrance toppled to the floor. Urkabis had found it, but had he dug its way out? He could either search the museum or search the tunnel. He chose the tunnel and crawled inside.

  Many of the dreams had arrived at the museum, and they milled about like people arriving early at a theatre performance when the doors are not yet open to begin seating. The only sign of change to the museum was a large rolled up tarp that hung above the main entrance, but it was not clear what purpose it served. Rick was there, and he was keeping a lookout for Gwen and Roger.

  “Let’s give them a few more minutes,” Rick said. “Then, we will split up and survey the outside of the museum and see if any changes have begun.”

  Rick noticed a lady walking toward the museum and said, “I think Gwen is coming now.”

  As she reached the base of the steps, it was clear to see that it was Dharma. The dreams stared at her in fear.

  “It’s okay, she can’t hurt you, and she is not confined by the museum. Urkabis is still locked inside,” Rick said.

  From across the street, Roger, now covered in dirt, came stumbling up the steps. “Everybody inside now!” He yelled. “That creature is out! Get inside!”

  Dharma ran up the steps and around the small group of people to the entrance. The crowd stood for a moment, not fully comprehending what Roger was yelling, and confused by Dharma’s actions.

  “NOW! Get inside! Hurry!” Roger yelled again.

  They began to move to the opening, and there on top of the museum sign stood Urkabis. He roared out a scream, and the dreams ran frantically to the entrance. Dharma waited and then pulled the rope attached to the tarp over the doorway. It unrolled and released an oddly fashioned net that fell upon the dreams. Some of them fell and stumbled over one another. Dharma ran across behind them and tightened the net trying to contain them all.

  Urkabis leaped down from the sign to assist her. One dream struggled free from the net, only to be immediately snagged by Urkabis’s tongue, like a scampering insect. In the blink of an eye, he was drawn in and sliced open. The blue fire welled up from inside the dream’s body, Urkabis roared, and sucked in the fire. The others watched the all too familiar process, and fear mounted in their hearts and minds that this too would now be their fate.

  Roger and Rick rushed Urkabis and succeeded in knocking him down. Roger beat on him with his fists, and Rick desperately tried to free the rope securing the net from his hand. But Urkabis was now too strong for them. Roger’s blows were powerful but not enough to subdue Urkabis, and Rick’s struggles to free the rope were futile.

  Dharma dragged Rick off Urkabis, away from the netting and rolled him down the stairs. Urkabis lifted Roger above him and extended his tongue, giving him a long slow lick. Roger shook as a jolt of electricity from the tongue raced through his body, and then hung limp and unconscious.

  “You have a much different energy, a very different loosh. Perhaps when I finish with all the humans I can pursue your kind,” Urkabis said.

  He then tossed Roger aside, and he too tumbled down the steps. “They are all mine now,” Urkabis said.

  “Look!” Dharma said with glee. “The purple light of the barrier is fading. The hope any of these dreams had in surviving is gone now.”

  “Yes. The beacon is disengaged as I have control of all the dreams. Notopia is shutting down! We will take them inside and string them up as they did you, Dharma. Then, I will kill them one by one and let the precious paintings and remaining humans witness their destruction.”

  Urkabis and Dharma dragged the net inside the museum. There, he removed dreams from the netting one at a time, holding them the air while Dharma bound their hands and completed the process of suspending them from the same cross beam that she had hung from the day before. Urkabis randomly selected several dreams and dispatched them with his bony claw instead of passing them to Dharma. Curiously, there was no resistance from the dreams.

  “Can we save the little boy for last?” Dharma asked.

  “I can see you are beginning to join me in thought,” replied Urkabis.

  With the net empty, seven dreams hung above the floor silently inside the museum beside the inner dome. Behind them, Urkabis’s gigantic painting provided an eerie backdrop. It was not unlike a scene from Dante’s Inferno, with demons and devils torturing and devouring hapless human victims. In front of them was the balance of the museum’s collection of fulfilled dream paintings.

  They were stacked one behind another in one big mass almost like a crowd. They constantly shuffled about as though they were looking for an exit or somewhere else to go. In front, two paintings floated unwaveringly like sentries, remaining still and noticeably prominent. They were Gwen’s spiritual painting and her universalistic painting. The only painting in the museum that had not migrated with the others was Gwen’s original dream that remained in the inner dome, where Bradley had been fishing earlier.

  The dreams seemed almost comforted by being able to view the paintings in the last moments of their existence. Dharma followed the sightline of the dreams and took a close look at Gwen’s painting.

  In the mist of Gwen’s Spiritual painting, the usual featureless humanoid shape was now two figures who stood motionless. An occasional wisp of mist wafted from the painting and flowed into the room without consequence. The glass-looking barrier that collected moisture was no longer there. In the Universalistic painting, the conglomeration of objects that constantly morphed into other objects and overlapped onto one another continued, but the frame was broken on one side.

  “I think these two paintings have changed,” Dharma said.

  “It matters not. Soon nothing will matter,” Urkabis said.

  “Why don’t we kill them now and be done with it?”

  “I want Gwen to see it happen. I have no doubt she will be along shortly.”

  Bradley broke the silence of the dreams. “Gwen will stop you.”

  “There is nothing in Notopia or on Earth that can stop me now, little man.”

  At the bottom of the steps, Rick managed to work his way over to Roger. Rick was not used to pain in Notopia, and if he wasn’t mistaken, his wrist was broken. This was a sign that Urkabis had won, and the end was upon them. Roger was unconscious and didn’t appear to be coming around anytime soon.

  Gwen approached the museum and knelt beside Rick. “Stay with him,” she said. “I don’t know how or why I am the one to stop this thing, but I must trust my paintings and my fate.”

  Rick was at a loss for words and watched Gwen ascend the stairs. She climbed each step with a confident stride and entered the museum to face Urkabis. She walked right past Dharma, without any recognition of her existence, and she stopped about 40 feet from Urkabis and the seven dreams hanging in the air.

  Gwen stood and felt alo
ne. The smell from Urkabis was not as raw as before, but it was still foul. The independent eye movement caught her presence in a flash, and he turned to face her. Urkabis flexed his bony blade and snapped his tongue at Gwen. She was too far away for it to touch her, but some of the saliva splashed off onto her. Gwen didn’t flinch, and inexplicably, she was not afraid.

  He glared at her as she stood in the rubble from the walls bashed in earlier. “You are the one known as Gwen. When I first defeated the blue fire, I became aware of your presence, but you don’t have a dream here, and you pose no threat to me. I will deal with you another time. I waited for you, Gwen, so you could watch Notopia die. You are much smarter, much more creative than the others, but as you see, it is not enough. All that will be left is you, Dharma and me. Notopia will be my dream world, and the human’s search for knowledge will flounder, lapse into stagnation, and then into oblivion. I only have to wait to use them as playthings.”

  He approached Gwen, and she stood her ground. She didn’t feel scared, or angry, or any other emotion. This thing had nothing but contempt for life in any form, and thus, it evoked no emotions in her at all. It was as if a boulder was rolling toward her and she knew it would stop.

  His bony fingers caressed her cheek and throat. “It doesn’t end here, Gwen. You see, once all the dreams are vanquished, the power of Notopia becomes mine to control. Then, I will have but one dream, and that will be to convert my current form of sustenance, to fear. Then, I can join all of you on earth and feed for all eternity. Behold!” He pointed behind her.

  She turned to see Urkabis’s gigantic painting changing into a black, and purple canvas with wrenched hands and anguished faces gurgling outward, only to be yanked back in by long sinewy fingers. “That is your future. Yours and all of humanity.”

  Dharma now stood at the base of the frame caressing it lovingly with her hands. “I am anxious for this,” she said.

  The frame began to crumble, and the paint spilled over the sides onto Dharma, and she sank to the floor, playing with the paint. Urkabis stared in disbelief then turned in anger toward Gwen. He grabbed her by the throat yelling, “Stop whatever you are doing!”

  “You are nothing more than hiccups or an untimely sneeze. A poor excuse for a pestilence created by the gods and released by Pandora. You will only succeed in extinguishing yourself. Oh yes, you react well, adapt well, evolve as needed, but without human input, you cannot plan, or be prepared for what is coming.”

  Dharma sat in a puddle on the floor drenched with paint. She began to rub the mixture all over herself in an erotic fashion, relishing the feeling.

  Urkabis lifted Gwen off the floor by her throat and screeched wildly. His hand around her neck began to glow, and his fingers were slowly peeling back. In a matter of seconds, Gwen dropped to the floor, and Urkabis drew back his hand in pain.

  “You are beginning to see now what I mean,” Gwen said.

  Dharma’s joy quickly changed to pain and her skin began to bubble and release puffs of smoke, but before she could cry out for help she collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  In disbelief, Urkabis said, “But how? You could not have done that?”

  “She did not do that,” came a response from atop the first landing of a spiral staircase. There, in a golden glow, stood a human-like figure with rough indentations where the usual facial features would be. Those features began to become distinct, and soon all could see that it was Paul.

  “Nor was it he,” another voice from behind him on the floor rang out, and there stood Delilah, also in a warm golden hue.

  “You are not human!” Urkabis roared, and then let loose the all too familiar horrifying scream.

  “I will take you like the others; you have no business here! The collective did not send you, and you have no power here!”

  “That is where you are mistaken, Urkabis. These are my friends, they are part of my love, and you have no concept of either. You are not even a ‘he’ or a ‘she.’ You have more in common with a rock than you do with any living life form,” Gwen said.

  “She is quite right,” Paul said, “and that is precisely why we could not act against you until now. You see, Gwen is the newest child of love from this part of the universe, and even though she loathed your existence, she kept trying to love you. She finally realized you were not an entity at all, not capable of compassion on any level. Nothing more than a rock, or, as she said, ‘a sneeze.’ We could not destroy something that Gwen loved.”

  “I will kill her now!” Urkabis yelled and tried to move toward Gwen but could not walk. He couldn’t move his legs or arms, and then he began to rise off the floor. The mass that constantly rolled inside of him now generated a gold-colored ooze instead of green.

  “No, you will not,” Paul said.

  Gwen watched as Urkabis was lifted higher and higher and as it crashed through the ceiling of the museum and pressed up against a cloud. She ran outside to see what would be next. Higher and higher, he rose toward a cloud forming above. His legs and arms, now free to move, were uselessly flailing about as the screams continued to bellow forth.

  The cloud surrounding Urkabis grew quite large. Delilah and Paul stood outside with Gwen. Paul put his hands together then pulled them apart in a welcoming gesture. Urkabis burst apart, leaving only a golden mass pulsating beneath the cloud. For the first time that anybody could remember, it began to rain in Notopia. The golden mass spread evenly under the cloud and the rain increased.

  “Watch there,” Delilah said, and pointed at the base of the steps to the museum. A rather large drop hit the pavement, and instead of splashing, it swelled into a dome shape about a foot tall and expanded to three feet. The dome was rainbow colored, and within seconds, it burst open, and a person stood in its place. To his right, another, and another, and yet another. She looked around, and many more were popping up. The dreams were returning.

  “They had been swirling inside Urkabis. We released them,” Delilah said.

  Behind them, just down the hill, Gwen could see homes blossoming up all over. Roadways were taking shape; Notopia was returning. The dreams emerged from the museum opening. One yelled, “The paintings are returning!”

  Gwen knew that meant the people would be coming back soon. “Paul! Delilah! You did it!” she said, turning and hugging them both.

  “Gwen, we must leave now,” Paul said.

  “Leave? No, stay. Stay and see it reborn!”

  “We cannot; we must leave before the others return. They can’t know what we have become.”

  “I don’t understand. What have you become? You saved it all. How did you do that? What is this golden glow you have?” Gwen stopped herself. “Why do I ask so many questions?”

  “You wouldn’t be Gwen if you didn’t,” Paul laughed.

  “But I only ramble them out like that when it’s something new, and it’s something I long to explore.” She paused for a moment. “You mean I must leave as well, don’t I?”

  “Give me your hand, Gwen. You were never meant to be in Notopia for very long. You don’t have a dream here like the others. It was Paul and me in the Spirituality painting, and it is us guiding the journey in the Universalistic realm. Much like Mother Nature on Earth, Notopia too also evolves. When the first inclination of extinction surfaced in Roger, the counter actions began in you. That is why your portal paintings were from the same location,” Delilah said.

  Paul added. “That’s why you were always seen to be so special here. It’s why your dream paintings didn’t rearrange like the others. Didn’t you ever wonder why dreams never approached you as a potential seeker? It was because they always knew you were not a seeker.”

  “With each arrival, you challenged the fundamental way Notopia worked. Several hundred years ago, another young woman, Charlotte Corday, carried the ultimate gift of love just as you do. So, Notopia was already aware that it could happen, but the details of the 21st century were quite a strain to manipulate. Your cell
phone, your car in the driveway, the toast, the coffee, and even your movies all had to be, shall we say, processed differently to that of a seeker,” Delilah said.

  “Even then, you were quite a handful to deal with, but Notopia managed. Your falling in love with Leo was the most perilous moment for this whole place,” Paul said.

  “Is Leo okay? Will I get to see him?”

  “Gwen, you will know all about Leo and his dreams, and so very much more, very soon,” Paul answered.

  Gwen extended her hand, and the golden glow was every bit as strong on her as it was with Paul and Delilah, and she began to cry.

  “What’s the matter, Gwen?” Delilah asked.

  “Nothing, nothing at all. I am just not accustomed to asking questions and getting answers.”

  Paul spoke without moving his lips. “There is more ahead, and there are many entities anxious to meet you. After all, the universe has been waiting a very long time for the love from earth to be shared.”

  Chapter 22

  Rick swept up some dust left behind by the repairman. It had taken a month, but all repairs on the museum were complete, and all the paintings were back. Notopia itself was bustling again with a steady stream of visitors in the museum. Gwen’s painting was complete and had become Rick’s favorite. He often stopped by to gaze longingly at the lake and wished he could cast a line. Kneeling to sweep up the last of the dirt into the dustpan, he noticed some chair legs inside the inner room. That’s odd, he thought.

  He entered the room and was surprised to see Bradley standing on a chair. He stood there barefoot, in shorts and a blue T-shirt, holding a fishing pole, with another pole leaning on the chair, and there was a large picnic basket on the floor. This time though, the fishing poles were complete with a rod and reel.