9. House Call

I curled up in a bed, like a baby in a cradle. It was like one of those beds you might see in a commercial for laundry detergent, soft and warm as the womb. A fluffy white down comforter and linen sheets so soft it was like returning to the womb. I wrapped them around my shoulders and rolled over. There was light in my eyes, penetrating my eyelids and I wanted the light to go away. I was devoted to sleep and not interested in where I had been or where I was going when I woke up. I wanted to stay in that cocoon until the end of time. So it felt pretty much like a standard morning

“Are you enjoying the bed? Exhausting work, isn’t it? All of this astral projection.” said a voice that I didn’t recognize. Some kind of accent but it took too much work to think about it. The speaker prodded me gently but I wasn’t ready to roll over and embrace the reality of the waking world just yet. So he kept talking. “Isaac, did you dream?” Plop ‘ik?, I wondered absently. No, definitely not him. “My name is Hou Choi, and I am a friend of Plop ‘ik and of Ana Martinson. I need you to listen to me. I want to help you. For you see, you’ve lost your mind.” There was something tender in his voice, like a pediatrician speaking to a small child. Calm yet very firm.

Ana! I found her! I sat up and shouted“I dreamed about Ana. She’s alive! She’s in Ketchikan! We have to-”

“Ana is quite well I assure you. She survived the virophage, though there have been some consequences. We cannot afford to worry about that now, however. I need you to drink this tea.” An asian man sat in a steel chair about two feet from the bed where I lay. He was wisp thin and had to be at least sixty years old by the lines around his dark, almond-shaped eyes. He wore a grey suit and tie. We were in a small room with white glass walls. The only furniture was the chair in which the asian man sat and my bed. The door behind him was left ajar and white light leaked in from someplace else. I really had no idea where I was or even what day it was.

He handed me a cup, “It is an essence of Moonmoth wing, though I think you will have an easier time accessing the subtle field within you this time. We have made some improvements. It will help to calm your mind.” He didn’t mention if the improvements were to the Moonmoth or to something else.

“Uh, the last time I did Moonmoth it didn’t exactly calm my mind,” I told him, remembering how I blacked out when I smoked with the priest outside of Ketchikan. Jesus, that felt so long ago now. I drank the tea anyway. I was thirsty.

“I realize that this experience has not been easy for you. I can help to recenter your chi, if you will let me.”

“Listen, man. I just want to go back to sleep.”

“In a moment. First, close your eyes, Isaac. I want you to listen to your own breath. Listen. Inhale through your nose. Exhale through your mouth. Listen deeply. Breathe.” He was like some kind of cheap yogi from a strip mall wellness-salon. But it felt nice, the heaviness of his voice, and my own breath. Nitrogen, carbon, and Oxygen. Oxygen to carbon-dioxide. I love a perfect system. A perfect system can only be created by computers or by nature itself. Either it happens as the result of the most intelligent plan with even the most microscopic detail taken into account, or by a serendipitous accident. Yet, I knew that not ten inches above my forehead was a being that violated all of my preconceptions of the aesthetic of the universe.

“If you can I want you to listen to my voice and visualize the things that I tell you. When I say a word, I want you to create an image in your mind. Then I want you to pretend that you are not dreaming, and the things you see are real.”

“First, think of a desert. This desert is very large, endless, but the sun is not too hot. The desert is entirely empty except for you, and you are walking. Do you sense how the sand slides out from under your feet? Do you feel the sun on your skin?”

It was so easy to go there. It was like flying in a dream. I felt propelled by my own emotions, my curiosity. I was the pilot and the engine of a rocket ship that could blast my mind into any reality that I wished. It was amazing, like lucid dreaming but a thousand times more vivid. The clean blue sky, the sand-dunes, it was all there, as if it had always been there. So familiar.

“Now, as you walk you find a jar, and then another larger jar, beyond that one another and so on. There are many jars but none too far from your reach. Each jar is a different size and each one has a word written so that you can read them all. One says oxygen. One says chakra. One says the sun. One says time. There is a living thing in each of these jars, but you can’t know what. It could be anything in the world.”

“What is this place? What are these jars?”

“They are emanations of a collective consciousness shared with all mankind. This is a place created by the minds of every living person on the planet, a dream space.”

The jars were all there, in a massive circle on the apex of a very large sand-dune. I saw their names written in chicken scrawl, and cursive. Some printed and some carved by hand.

“I want you to find the one that says Hope, and open it.”

I did as the voice said and found the jar. It was one of the smaller jars, about as big as a jar of pickles except it was opaque and clay. I removed the clay cap from the rim of the jar and carefully looked inside. It was a frog. A beautiful beetle, it looked like it came from the Amazon rainforest or something. It was striped with yellow and red lines, and turquoise ringlets around its legs.

“Please close the lid and set the jar on the sand,” the voice requested. Again I did as I was told. There was some feeling that the voice gave me. I wanted to obey it. It had an undeniable power over me, not from any kind of real authority, but from trust. “Now find the jar that says Death and open it, please.”

This was the smallest jar of all. It had a cork lid that popped when I opened it, like the fart from a tupperware container. Inside was a bright-green praying mantis. It was slowly cleaning its claws and its antennae were twirling above its triangular head. It was looking at me, and it was really starting to creep me out. I put the cap on and sealed up the little bug before the voice told me to.

“I want you to find one last jar for me, Isaac. This jar says the word Future. Open it and free the creature inside. Let it out of the jar. Do it now.”

The Future jar wasn’t the biggest. It wasn’t descript in any way save for the word written on it. It was about as big as a microwave oven, and very round. It was so light that when I picked it up I used too much force and threw the thing over my shoulder. It crashed open on the sand and thousands of honey bees were suddenly swarming all over me. Not stinging, but coating me in beating wings and crawling legs. Bugs. Why so many bugs?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Bees,” Choi said solemnly. “We must find Ahmuzen Cahb.”

“Shit,” muttered a woman’s voice softly from beyond the doorway. “I guess we’re going to Mexico.”

I recognize that voice! “Ana!” I shouted and rose from the bed, only to discover that I was completely naked. “Oh...”

“Here,” said Hou Choi, and handed me a terrycloth robe. I put it on and raced out the door.

She was standing in the antechamber across the room from the large circular portal that lead to the submarine dock, leaning against the wide window that looked out onto hundreds of glowing gold pyramids. A leather jacket, jeans, and a plain white tee had replaced her patient’s gown and for a woman who had recently contracted some strain of Super Ebola. The last time I saw her she had just killed a 9-foot-tall zombie bear with her bare hands. Was she one of these soldiers that Plop ‘ik had mentioned? Well, for one thing she could heal faster than any human being should be able to, she could control her own metabolism and seemed to be able to detect subtle magnetic fields all around her, oh yeah and she killed a bear with her bare hands!

“Bare hands...” I stammered. I had no idea what to say to Ana. I wanted to hug her, hell I wanted to kiss her, but there was some aspect to her, maybe just the way she stood there with those icy blue eyes pinning me to the floor.

“I left the hands, well paws really. I thought about taking the head but where would I mount it,” Ana said and smiled. Her smile was a perfect crescent of gleaming white teeth and full red lips. She was a goddess.

“Ana,” I said and crossed the room to hug her.

She squeezed back for a moment and whispered in my ear, “Thanks for saving my life.”

“Uh, no problem.” I had almost forgotten about that. Go, me. I was becoming the hero that I always wanted to be. Only... “I wish I could say it was all me but the medicine I gave you came from-”

“I know, Isaac. But you did good, for a newbie.” She gave me a peck on the cheek and then turned to speak to Hou Choi. “So, Choi. Here we are again. How long has it been, anyways?”

“Thirty six years, Ana Martinson. Not so long at all,” he said grinning. There was something in the way he moved, a delicacy, that reminded me of the kung fu masters I had watched in movies growing up. An economy of motion, as if no muscle on his body acted outside of his will. It was like watching a ballerina just to see him move across the room to join us by the window.

“Isaac, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,” Choi said and bowed to me. “I humbly apologize for the inconveniences placed upon you by these... unusual circumstances.”

For some reason that pissed me off. “Oh do you mean being nearly killed? No wait, maybe you mean how everyone in town now thinks I’m a murderer. Yeah, it’s been pretty inconvenient.”

“Oh, no,” Ana interjected. “They don’t think you’re a murderer, Isaac. They think you’re a bioterrorist.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, it’s pretty funny actually. You’re like the most wanted man in the country right now,” Ana said, almost chuckling. The more she spoke the more my jaw dropped until it felt like I would have to pick it up off the floor. “They think you cooked up this Super Ebola strain at the hospital. Can you believe that? God, as if you could engineer a super virus!” Somehow I was almost insulted at that, not the sentiment but her tone of voice. Hey, I could engineer a super virus. I just don’t want to.

“This will make things difficult,” said Hou Choi. “We need to make our initial move and soon. Isaac is our only hope of convincing the other Architects to act against Kli Truip. You need to take him to Mexico to meet with the God of Bees.”

Ana turned away from us and gazed out the window. After a moment she spoke but did not look away from the window. “Kli Truip wants us dead. He knows who Isaac is, and of course he knows we’re in Alaska. I think that’s why he set the virus loose here first. The US government has Isaac on a terrorist kill-or-capture list and even if we can get out of the country without starting World War Three, Mexico is ten times worse. We’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Var inte så förbannat dum!”

“I’m not being stupid, Ana,” Choi said calmly. “I am as aware as you are of the risks, but we have come to the end of the game, and unless we-”

“Stop!” I interrupted him, my voice raised. I had meant to sound authoritarian but what came out sounded more like a petulant child. “Everybody shut up for one second!” They both looked at me like I was a mental patient. “Just what the hell are you two talking about?!”

Choi looked to Ana and she shrugged. “It might be easier to show you,” she said. Something in her eyes told me that would be easier said than done.

Choi turned out to be some kind of a doctor. He brought me to an examination room further down the hall of the tube people and I sat on a table of steel and white glass while he took my temperature and poked my ribs and organs. Then he drew some blood and placed it in a metal vial that he then put into a small hole in a rectangular machine the size of a refrigerator. He held an Omnipad in his left hand and flipped a pen absent-mindedly in his right. He seemed distracted.

“So,” asked the doctor as I sat on the examination table, swinging my legs. “Still waiting on that forthcoming explanation.”

He looked up from the device, “Unfortunately, I feel inadequate as historian for our cause. Perhaps, Amelia when she comes back from... wherever she has gone.”

“Can you at least tell me what I’m doing on this table?”

“Preparing for surgery, I need to install a small neural shunt in your skull. Please lie down, Mr. Austen.”

Surgery? Sure! Oh, yeah of course put a neural shunt in my skull! I looked over to the glass door that lead out to the antechamber. A part of me wanted to scream, to protest, even to try and run away. Maybe I could jump into the submarine, get to the surface and find my way back to shore. But what would I do then? I was a fugitive. A terrorist. I had no choice.

“And after that?” I asked, somewhat dejected. Or at least depressed that once again I was powerless and in the hands of forces I did not understand.

“There is no way for you to learn what we need you to learn by telling. Yes, I could tell you that you have the capability of transdimensional psychic teleportation, or that once you are fully activated you will be able to extend your subtle body field and manipulate any object with your mind. But, as you see, these are just words, Isaac.”

“Not very comforting words.”

“Comfort,” he said lifting a small syringe into my view. “Is a luxury you will have to learn to live without, but if you can... If we succeed,” he paused to inject me in the neck with a clear liquid. “We give the human race the only chance it has.”

Once again I sank into a dark oblivion, but by this time I was starting to understand how the line between consciousness and unconsciousness was thinner that I had believed before. Immediately I realized I was in some kind of lucid dream. I was floating above the examination table, once again disembodied. Only this time I had a more than tenuous grasp on how one could move in space without a body. I could sense, rather than see, a thin blue cone of energy, my energy, connecting my sleeping body with the ghost-like phantom that I was without it. I was anchored to myself, and so I had the freedom to drift. I went up. As far as I that thin tether to my body would let me. Before I realized what I’d done I was in the black vacuum of space. I saw pinwheels take shape in the darkness, like thousands of spinning waves, the colors of the Aurora Borealis, fading in and out of an utter void. Star clusters whirled past me at impossible speeds. I could see in every direction, though seeing wasn’t the right word. My perception was like its very own star, radiating out in every direction, sensing everything.

Suddenly a voice cut through my stuporous wonder, “Hey, Isaac. This is some brain you got, dude. Watch this!” The disembodied voice was whooping like a kid on Christmas morning. Without warning I began to careen through the stars, faster and faster, my tether to my own body becoming as thin as a spider’s web. The pinwheels of color were flying in all directions, smashing into each other creating nebulas that grew into the spiral arms of a galaxy.

“This brain! This beautiful fucking brain!” It shrieked. The voice seemed like it was going insane with laughter. I recognized the tones that it made but the emotions were completely alien. It sounded almost like me. “Oh shit! I almost forgot. Hello, Isaac? Isaac Austen? Thanks for the use of your brain, man! I promise I won’t fuck it up. It is like heaven in here, so much power! Look, I know you have questions and you probably are freaking out a little right now. Don’t try to respond, just watch.”

A perfect plume of cosmic debris; lapis, orange, and flame red, exploded and then coagulated into the form of two shimmering eyes. Within the pupils I could see galaxies, billions of suns. I then began to fall, or I felt like I was falling. Maybe a more accurate verb would be zooming, like on a camera. The cluster of galaxies became one galaxy and then one star system and then one giant blue sphere, but it was not Earth. This world was much larger and I couldn’t see any continents at all, just clouds and ocean.

The voice spoke again, “This is Myriad. I’m a friend of Plop ‘ik’s? That cyclops alien guy who made you piss your PJ’s? I want to show you something kind of weird. When it happens you’re going to be like ‘What the fuck’?! But just chill. Breathe, my man. Well... don’t breath. At this point you're just a cloud of psychic energy so you don’t have lungs.

“This is just like a little movie, you know. Just relax and I’ll get you up to speed on all of the extraterrestrial bullshit. Plop ‘ik tends to leave humans in the dark when he hires them. Just pay attention and remember to- Oh fuck! We are out of time, God, I can work fast with this brain. Okay-” and with that the voice was gone and my mind was floating above a world that no human eyes had ever seen.