Hypnosis is not what people think it is. It is not magic. We are all, always, engaged in some level of hypnosis. If you have ever driven from point A to point B, and not remembered the journey, you were hypnotized. If you ever went to a movie and forgot that there are others sitting near you because you are so engrossed in the movie, you were hypnotized. To go to sleep every night, you pass through a level of ‘focus’ that is technically the zone of suggestibility that hypnosis best operates. If you have ever allowed yourself to relax enough to the point where you have an orgasm, you were hypnotized. If you have ever hated anyone or loved anyone, you were engaged in the most powerful form of self-hypnosis available to you. And no one other person can hypnotize you. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. All session of hypnosis is dual, tandem hypnosis.
The person hypnotizing you is agreeing to a participatory role of both parties interacting on a deeper, more focused level. The person hypnotizing you is also entering a special state of mind, and the two minds cooperate on a profound level agreeing to the game, which allows deeper levels to unfold.
I am not quite sure what ‘induction’ technique Jung used, or even what he asked me, because I went deep fast. So deep, so fast, I was suddenly transported. I arrived in a mysterious place, a disk floating in space. If Jung was still speaking to me, I couldn’t hear him, and he didn’t answer when I called his name. The outer edges of the disk were gold and I could walk to the edge and look down over the edge and there was only more space below. I was wishing for something below me. A turtle. Anything!
Laughter drew my attention back to the disk.
“Iiiii don’t recommend jumping,” he said, in a long drawn out, almost fun, sort of familiar banter. “It’s a long fall down. You can trust me on that one.”
I blinked hard. “Jim Carrey?”
Jim laughed. He laughed obnoxiously hard, bending and slapping, and getting on his knees and slapping the floor and leaning back, arching his back and laughing into the heavens, managed to reduce his laughter to gasps, calmed himself down, and then began laughing again. And then quit. Very serious. “If you like.”
“All of that for ‘if you like,’” I asked. “What do you see, mortal?” Jim asked. “Is this a test?”
“Could be,” Jim said.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you, but I must say, I am feeling a little stressed,” I said. “What do you see?” he asked.
I am standing on a disk, the outer edges are gold. Oh, the inside of the disk is black and white circling tear drops. Yin and Yang! Inside each of the tear drops were eyes, or circles, infinite yin and yang divisions. Oh, there was suddenly a moon, rising. Not ‘the moon’ but it was ‘moonish’ enough to clearly be a moon. Opposite the moon was a solar disk, shooting out wings that enclosed the whole of the space and disappeared. I got the sense that the disk was spinning end over end and I feared slipping off into oblivion. I moved towards Jim Carrey it appeared his side of the disk was rising, but when I arrived center, he motioned me to stop.
“Red light,” Jim sang, and I stopped. “Ahh, good you remember how to play.”
“Are you God?” I asked.
Jim laughed. “Do you really want to meet God?”
“You’re not God?” I asked.
“Turn around,” Jim said.
I turned around. Directly opposite of Jim was Morgan Freeman. “God?” I asked.
“If you like, Son,” Morgan said. “Again, if I like?” I asked.
“He doesn’t get it,” Jim said.
I turned to Jim and discovered I couldn’t see Morgan and Jim at the same time, but I could hear them both.
“You’re not God!” I said, pointing.
“Who were you expecting,” Jim asked. “Q?”
“Actually, that would make sense,” I said.
“I told you he would forsake you,” Jim said, speaking through me to Morgan.
“He hasn’t forsaken me,” Morgan said. “Forsaking, even disparaging, requires clarity.
The humans are still too young to truly grasp what it means to be free agents.”
“You always have a way out for them! What will it take for you to see them as they truly are and destroy them once and for all?!” Jim demanded. I couldn’t decide if Jim was angry or pathetically sad.
I turned to Morgan. “There is still so much love in them. So much good in them that begs to be borne.”
“Per the rules of our game, he has denied you, he has threatened you. Hell, he has pursued and bedded the bitch whore Isis,” Jim said.
“Wait wait wait,” I said. “Am I Job here? I don’t want to be Job!”
Morgan smiled. I turned to Jim. “You wish you were God’s favorite,” Jim said.
“Oh, no I don’t,” I said quickly. I turned back to God. “Really, I don’t. Nothing personal, but I read your book and nothing good comes from people who talk to you. I mean, I would rather travel with the Doctor the rest of my life.”
“That could be arranged,” Morgan said.
“It was arranged! He turned that shit down, too,” Jim said.
“I said everything was fair game, except killing him,” Morgan said.
“I didn’t kill him,” Jim said. “He killed himself. And I told you he would. He couldn’t even endure a year in the loop before he killed himself.”
“You guys did this to me? You’re playing games with me?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “With us? How is that even moral?”
Jim laughed, raised his hands to Morgan. “Your baby. Explain it to him.”
I turned back to Morgan. Morgan placed his hands in the small of his back and began to walk the outer periphery of the gold part of the disk. I turned to see Jim was also walking, as if the two had to remain equal distance from each other. There’s a center line of the disk, and as Jim stepped over the line, he became someone else. He became female. He became Nikita Ager. And how do I know her? Well, I have seen a great deal of movies, and this was actually one of her roles. And, I guess, she convinced me.
“OMG,” I said. Had the devil led with this, I so would have been screwed. Now, there was just enough doubt to make me hesitate, question. Yeah, I would still do her, who am I kidding. I am so screwed.
“I am here.” I turned to face the female voice of God, embody in the form of Ethel Waters. Her hair styles was from the thirties and the dress couldn’t have been more flapper-ish. And though she was alluring in her own way, I felt compelled to think of her reverently, unlike Isis, who tolerated my longing and so there was the hinting of something mutually unfolding. Morgan and Ethel were like parents. “Yes, still here,” she assured me.
“Umm,” was all I could manage.
“He still doesn’t get it?!” Nikita said, her hair curly and wild and her eyes fierce. She also had no problems with displaying her feminine attributes. Angry or not, I wanted to be consumed by her. “No one gets it! I mean, it is right there in the book, just plain as day. You were made in our likeness, male and female were you made. In the beginning there was no separation. We are one. We are androgynous.”
I turned to Ethel. “Alternating current, waves, day and night, male and female, love and fear, is the nature of everything born into duality,” Ethel said. “Don’t linger here. Go higher.”
“What’s higher than God?” I asked.
“Higher? He doesn’t want to go higher. He longs to be Adam!” Nikita said, stopping and holding her ground. She seemed to be soaking in energy, surrendering to a music I couldn’t hear. “I can feel his lust radiating from him! Leave me alone with him, and he will be worshiping me in less a minute, inside me in three.”
“I would be happy to leave you two alone,” Ethel said.
I forced myself to look at Ethel. It was like tearing my eyes away from an erotic dancer, squatting against the pole just as she was hiking up her skirt and about to swing her legs wide open. That’s really hard shit to turn away from. Like when Sharon Stone in Basic instinct uncrosses her legs, no one can look away from that. Hell, you don’t even have to google “basic Instinct” or Sharon Stone, just google, “scene where she uncrosses her legs.” It goes right there! Which means, what? Iconic? Ironic? Can you have any doubt how much sex really drives us at a fundamental level? Only by the Grace of God was I able to turn my head back.
“What?” I asked.
“You think you’re the only man who has ever had this weakness?” Ethel asked. “Go ahead, Lilith. Take him. But prepare yourself, it won’t be worship with John, it will be love. I never punish people for loving. And maybe, just maybe, if you felt that love from someone other than me, someone who gives to you freely without asking of you, you might remember what it feels like and be renewed.”
“He can’t fuck me without taking from me!” Nikita said.
“Nor can he fuck you without giving to you,” Ethel said. “Fucking, surrendering, both are acts of love. An expression of something deeper that moves without words.”
I was really confused by this conversation. For starters, it was almost like I wasn’t necessary at all. It’s almost like, the game really wasn’t about Job and his relationship with God, but God and his relationship with the Devil. God was engaged in some serious salvation, and it wasn’t about human salvation, but about his first love, his first creation. He loved even Satan, the shining one. Sure, I was a part of this, but they were holding something between themselves and I was just… I have no clue what I am. Nikita seemed taken aback, as if she, too, were surprised. And then she laughed. She laughed hard and bent over, her head going over the line so Jim’s head and shoulders were there, and when she stood erect it was all her again. And that was creepy and my wanting for her became less. What would happen if we were engaged and we rolled across that line? I shuddered.
“What’s love got to do with it,” Nikita sang, pushing over the line and becoming Jim. “What’s love, but a second hand emotion?”
I turned to Ethel to find she had become Morgan. He seemed amused. “It pleases me to hear you singing again,” Morgan said.
“Ahhh! Come on!” Jim said, dramatically throwing his hands around. “He even separated Loxy from himself the way we tore Eve from the first man. Don’t you see what he’s doing?”
“He is forever youthful,” Morgan said. “They were instructed to be fruitful and multiply.”
“I think they over did it!” Jim said. “Origin held ten billion before they blew it up?”
“I have made a promise that they shall outnumber the stars. That’s hardly a fraction of what is to come,” Morgan said. “It is time to let them see the repercussions for their thoughts. Only when they have clarity can they be properly judged. The thousand years of peace has begun.”
“If a day is a thousand years, how long is a thousand years? This could take forever?!” Jim ranted. “Ninety percent of them are asleep and don’t have a clue!”
“The awakening has begun,” Morgan said, becoming Ethel: “We enter the age of Aquarius.”
“We will see just how much love he has when he learns the secret,” Jim said. “I will hold him captive until he knows, and then you will see. Everyone will see!”
“Does anyone here care what I think?” I asked.
Nikita rushed me, vampire teeth and claws, and bit down on my neck. “I said don’t kill him!” Ethel said.
“Fine!” Nikita said, taking me to the floor. Her eyes were ablaze, her mouth and tongue nonhuman, her breast in my face as she drove her body hard into me, settling into place, riding me aggressively, sliding as if we were oiled, the universe turning above us, night and day spinning wildly, as she sucked my breath away, and finally, shoved my face between her breast and forced me hard: “Let him cum between us.”
Fuck! I hit the shield.
I got Loxy alone in our quarters and sent a message to the Bridge that Loxy and I would be detained, a personal emergency, and ask that our shifts be covered. Loxy was curious about the ‘emergency,’ but I had her sit down and started telling her a story. Mostly a story about herself and how I believed she was struggling and once or twice she nearly bolted thinking I was crazy, but also because I was dead on about her in a spooky sort of way, she tarried, but she wasn’t buying that I was a cycling time traveler, even after I informed her she was pregnant, and she took out her tricorder and scanned herself.
“OMG?!” Loxy said. “How are you doing this? Telepathy from me being a part of you?
You rigged the scanner?”
“No, you’re really pregnant,” I said. “That can’t be! I…” Loxy said. “Say it,” I said.
“I am not real!” Loxy said. “You’re realer than real,” I said.
“This is a dream. It has to be. How did you know?” Loxy demanded. “Unless, you’re scanning me without my permission.”
“I told you how I know,” I said. “I am stuck in temporal loop, doing the same thing over and over, and believe me, Sacagawea is tired of me telling her ‘don’t drive angry.’”
“No one gets your jokes, John,” Loxy said. “Stop trying to be funny.”
I sighed. I looked at my watch. “In a moment Tyson and Mainzer are going to come through that door to tell us about a mystery. Mainzer is going to want to take an Away team to the 2nd planet because of some peculiarities and I am going to say no, because that pathway leads to our deaths,” I said.
“You’re speaking nonsense,” Loxy said.
The door chime rang. “Come,” I said, causing the door to open. Tyson and Mainzer entered and Loxy stood.
“May we have a moment?”
“If you’re setting me up for some sort of joke, I don’t approve,”
“Come sit down,” I said, motioning towards the couch. “I would offer you a drink, but you’re both going to say no, because you don’t want to intrude, you just want to talk about the anomalous readings from probe 2.”
Both Tyson and Mainzer seemed shocked. “Are you reviewing the data, too?” Mainzer asked.
“Please sit,” I said.
They both sat, at the edge of the couch, like professionals who have some exciting information, and really didn’t want to appear as if they were staying, though they would secretly be happy to sit back and talk, because that’s what we nerds do, only I had spoiled their excitement and added more to the mystery. Loxy remained standing.
“You’re going to tell me that probe two has detected what appears to be a force field around the second planet from the sun, and artificial satellite, perhaps a space station, in orbit,” I said.
“We just started going through the data,” Mainzer said. “How did you know?” I looked to Loxy. “You’re all in on it.”
“In on what?” Tyson asked.
“We’re not going anywhere near the second planet,” I said. “But this satellite is really strange,” Mainzer said.
“I know,” I said.
“How can you know? We only caught a partial visual before it went behind the planet from the perspective of the probe,” Mainzer said. “It won’t be visible against until 16:10.”
“Yep,” I said. “At 16:12 we will receive a message saying keep away, and at 16:15, the probe gets blasted.”
Loxy sat down in the chair across from me. “You’re not making this shit up?”
“Why would they destroy our probe?” Mainzer asked. “I thought we came in peace?”
“We do,” I said. “But they have the right to declare their boundaries.”
“But, this is important. Tesla agrees with me. Whoever they are, they are light years ahead of us,” Mainzer said.
“Now, hold on,” Tyson said. “That’s just speculation at this point.”
“You saw the same thing we did,” Mainzer said. “That artifact is rotating through dimensions, changing shape and mass.”
“We can’t be sure of the change in mass until the probe is close enough to get precise measurements,” Tyson said.
“John… I mean, Captain, I think this is important,” Mainzer said. “If they are so hostile they’re going to destroy probes, how do you suppose they will react when we establish an active Stargate on the fourth planet and make it a foothold?”
“Valid point,” I said. “Do you know what happens if this ship gets destroyed?”
Tyson and Mainzer were quiet. “You both know that it’s bigger on the inside? That there is an actual neutron star in the star drive engine?”
They both nodded.
“Yeah, I know, it’s hard to look at and harder to believe, but it’s there, I have personally laid eyes on it,” I said. “Indirectly. Through a shield and special transparent tech. Probably not glass. What do you call something transparent and not glass but clearly window-ish like? Do you suppose it would be okay to look at a neutron star directly? Oh, never mind, off topic. Whew, it’s really hard to stay focus lately. So, hypothetically, let’s assume I have actual knowledge because I remember sending an Away Team, and they die, without any so much as a how do you do, nor do we glean any good intel. Additionally, assume that my hypothetical response is to puff out my shoulder and go a draw a line in the sand, and doing so I get everyone on this ship killed. But it’s not just the 5K crew. It’s the 500,000 plus inhabitants of dome one. It’s all the other domes that we don’t even know about, and, yeah, I bet there are other habitats with life in it within the Dyson Sphere, even though Midori is telling me they are just now beginning to seed some of the surrounding domes. But it’s also all the life in this solar system because when that neutron star drops out of the dimensional fold we have it tucked up into and back out into the Universe proper, it occupies a great deal of space. Now, tell me, what is the appropriate response?”
They were silent.
“Yeah,” I said. “I haven’t got one either.”
“Did you consider that maybe they’re responsible for your time loop?” Loxy asked. “Yeah,” I said.
“Time loop?” Tyson asked.
“This is where you both take out your tricorders and try to find some evidence that I am covered in chronons or tachyons, and we hold a great conversation full of technical babble that gets us nowhere,” I said. “I am stuck in a loop, and I keep resetting back to 13:13, after having petted a leptoceraptops and getting my hand crushed.”
“A leptoceraptops?” Tyson asked.
“I think it’s a miniature Triceratops,” Mainzer said. “And you know this because?” Tyson said. “Infinite time loop?” Mainzer said.
Loxy laughed.
“OMG, that’s not fair,” I complained. “You so wouldn’t have laughed had I said it.”
“Because you’re not funny,” Loxy said.
“Seriously, how did you know?” Tyson said. “My sister’s kids love dinosaurs,” Mainzer said. “We should call a staff meeting,” Loxy said.
“Because her sister’s kids love dinosaurs instead of astronomy?” I asked. “Don’t be silly,” Loxy said. “We need to do something to help you.”
“Done that, been there,” I said. “And if I find a groundhog, I plan to kill it and eat it like the Peruvians eat Guineas Pig.”
“Guineas Pig is surprisingly good,” Tyson said.
“Eww,” Loxy said. “How could you eat something so cute?!”
“I’m an omnivore,” Tyson said. “And, she’s right, John. If you’re really stuck in a temporal loop, we need to study this. I personally think cataloging planets is the low end of astronomy and temporal mechanics and particle physics is where it’s at and if you’re defying the laws of physics, we need to know how and why.”
“Unfortunately, the money to keep the science going is in discovering planets, not studying me cycling through time,” I said. “And though I agree, particle physics and temporal mechanics is fun, the novelty of cycling has lost its appeal a thousand years ago.”
“You’re joking, right?” Loxy asked. “You’ve been cycling for a thousand years?”
“Probably less, since I cycled at 13;13, and I usually fall asleep about 23:30. And I lost count because it’s not like I can write things down, so I am kind of guessing at that figure based on time spent with crew. There’s 5K crew, and I have spent at least a full day with each of them.”
“That’s would be about 15 years, not a thousand,” Tyson and Mainzer said. “I was exaggerating for effect,” I said.
“No, you just suck at math,” Loxy said. “Unless, you have been partying with more than the crew. OMG, John. You finally hooked up with the furrybrites.”
“I’ve been really bored!” I said. “Do you know how boring it gets when you’re stuck in a cell that’s a day long and a day wide?”
“Staff meeting, now,” Loxy said, standing up. “No one’s going to believe it,” I said.
“We’ll make them believe,” Loxy said.
“Fine,” I said. “Mainzer, would you go with Loxy, I want to chat with Tyson a bit while everyone’s gathering.”
“Five minutes,” Loxy said. “Okay,” I said.
Tyson stood as the ladies were leaving, and I felt compelled to stand because he did. The men on the crew are fairly formal with civilities afforded women, which I am not opposed to in practice, and was raised to opens the doors for women, it’s a Texas thing, but where I am confused is that equal rights means don’t do that, and some people, not just women, get mad if you hold a door open for them. It occurred to me, even throughout Origin, I was pretty courteous, with doors and giving up my seat on the train, and so standing when people, or women, departed was simple courtesy that I should do without thinking. But I was just Loxy… Oh, that could be significant. Do I take her for granted because I made her? I have seen celebrities that were actually very courteous towards others, and it’s possible you were on a public transit and Tyson or Keenu Reeves gave up their seat for you, and you didn’t even know it was them. (And I do love Keenu and that impresses me about him, and stars like him.) Funny how life is. After the ladies were gone, I motioned for him to sit again, and I took my seat. Even in my mind this was not resolved, and so I was probably going to waffle sometimes again.
But, part of not having a resolution was that I was with a celebrity I admire. After all this time on the ship with them, I was finally getting use to the fact that I was sitting with a celebrity, but some celebrities were harder to sit with than others, and I really admired Tyson, and so I guess a part of me was hoping it was reciprocated. Unfortunately, due to proximity, and my place in the command structure, the social equation had changed, and so though he probably would have like me well enough on origin, and probably likes me well enough here, I found it difficult to get past the idea that he was likely interacting with me only because I was the Captain and he was a captive audience. I actually felt guilty that everyone was here on this ship because of me, as if it were my fault. Had I secretly wished this life into being and because of my uncontrolled thoughts and desire I purposely by accident and unknowingly on demand brought everyone here? The same way I brought Loxy into existence?
“So, what’s on your mind?” Tyson asked.
“I have so much on my mind it’s sometimes difficult to track, but if that’s a euphemism for worrying, I am having to find new things to worry about,” I said. “Assuming we ever complete this day and get about the task of going to another star do you suppose the dust lane that goes around the Earth Cluster galaxy is safe to navigate through?”
“I am sure it is,” Tyson said, seemingly mused. “The particle density is great enough that we could cross the boundary without even seeing so much as a golf ball size particle.”
“But I have not seen any reports on the extinction curve, and the 2175 angstrom feature seems to be missing,” I said.
“Wow,” Tyson said, leaning back, patting the arm of his chair. “So, either you are more technically oriented than I imagined, or you are really, really bored, or you’re looking for techno babble as filler or ways to entice me into a conversation.”
“Oh, yeah, you got me. All of the above,” I said, and went right back into the worries. “Table the missing 2175 feature for now. I figure the reason we don’t have the extinction curve data yet, is we have not measured a statistically large enough sample of stars through the dust lane for comparative analysis.”
“Basically,” Tyson said. “But the dust lane itself actually present a more fundamental problem than extinction curves.”
“Why is there a dust lane at all?!” we both said. Yes. I stood up in my chair and sat on the back. “Exactly. Assuming that every star in the ECG-phenomenon was simultaneously placed by an advance civilization, then there shouldn’t be a dust lane at all. This should be like the cleanest galaxy in the entire Universe!’
“Unless, in the creating process, intergalactic dust and gas was already present and simply clumped or condensed into this region like condensation on a glass,” Tyson said.
“But doesn’t that violate Einstein’s premise that nothing is instantaneous?” I asked. “Like, his example of magically making the sun go away, the sudden loss of mass would not be noticeable right away. It takes time for gravity to be prorogated, just like light. Eight minutes after you remove the sun, earth would see the diminished light and then zip off in a new direction. And if that’s true, the reverse should be equally true, which means the gravitational effect of all of these stars as a whole should be minimal, at least for a hundred thousand years, so this cluster should be scattering like an exploding gumball machine. But if that idea isn’t right, then the sudden appearance and the weight of all of this mass should have a tremendous gravimetric wave front, like throwing something really big onto the surface of the ocean that causes a title wave.”
Tyson nodded. “There seems to be a great deal of inconsistencies,” he said. “We’re forging new ground here. I have evidence that this is an artificial structure, that Sol and earth have been duplicated a million times over, maybe more. But I don’t pretend to understand how or why.”
“Could it have been done with a transporter?” I asked.
“You’re asking me to speculate, when I clearly communicated it’s beyond my ability to imagine,” Tyson said. “There is no end to this.”
“But we have transporters. We can deconstruct someone and rematerialize them elsewhere, so…” I said.
“Yeah, the deconstruct bit is what worries me,” Tyson said. “Are we killing people and just making a copy of them elsewhere? And what’s to keep us from duplicating people, making endless transporter clones? We could send down transporter clones without sending the actual Away Team, and make them expendable, except they might actually want to come home, and then we would have two people wanting to be Captain. And, my understanding is the Brains already made copies of us, bringing us here from Origin, and I am surprised no-one’s fighting to return to Earth.”
“Really? Did you see what we were doing to Earth?” I asked.
“People would still want to go home, and with the tech available here, we could restore Earth,” Tyson said.
“Do you want to go back?” I asked.
“No, I am in hogs heaven,” Tyson said. “But I did have a life there and I was happy and now I am here, and I think I should be wanting to be back there, because I actually miss some people, but I know they aren’t affected by my absence because the real me is still there, and the clone me is here. I do wonder who is the real me. That first transport that brought me here, that is my last transport. I don’t want another.”
“You’re not the only one I’ve heard say that,” I said.
“Do you understand just how much energy it takes to turn matter into energy and back again?” Tyson.
“No. I have no metaphor that allows me to process it, and I don’t think about it, I just trust that it’s going to work,” I said. “The same way I don’t know how a computer works, but I am still happy to play Minecraft. Well, I lie; I do wonder about it. Like, maybe it draws energy directly from the quantum vacuum to get an energy boost. Maybe that explains the sparkles. Where-ever you beam into, the beams has to initially create a vacuum for the body to materialize into, or you risk contaminating the body, or worse, blowing it up, because two pieces of matter can’t occupy the same space at the same time. So, it creates a vacuum, and reassembles us from the inside out. And I can tell you, I am pretty euphoric for a moment after transport, so it’s got to be having a quantum effect on our nerves and hormones. I wonder what keeps the atoms in the body from being entrained.”
“I imagine the heart and movement of blood through the system causes enough noise to prevent entrainment,” Tyson said.
“But what would entrainment of a nonmagnetic substance look like?” I asked. “Diamonds,” Tyson said. “You’d be reassembled as a diamond, dramatically reduced in volume.”
“Oh! I need to update my will,” I said. “If I die, I want to be compressed into a diamond.”
“I hear they can do that,” Tyson said.
I sighed, my focus going distant. “I’m really exhausted.”
“Mentally, emotiona