Chapter 7
So, I think I have impressed upon you the importance of dreams in my life. Music is equally up there. When I say I listen to everything, well, I am not exaggerating. In my grandfather’s reel to reel collection I memorized all of the New Christi Minstrel’s songs, and have introduced my son to them and he loves the reel to reel which now needs to be fixed and I am hoping to find someone that is savvy enough, and hope if it needs parts they can be found. Grandfather also introduced me to big band and spiritual. My dad was country. Mom was pop. I participated briefly in band, learned the piano, and was in choir in school and part of a barbershop quartet choir in San Antonio, and performed at the San Antonio Little theatre. I listened to music from every country I have visited and even own every album Xuxa ever made. I love rhythm and blue and salt grass and old twang-y stuff and punk rock and head banging. I adore musicals. I especially love a serious movie that breaks into song and dance, subtly like in “Heart and Souls” or the opening of “Adventures in Baby Sitting,” but what sold that movie was when the adventurers arrived on stage and they were blocked by the gatekeeper, the old man: “No one gets out of here without singing the blues.”
When I first began writing fan fiction, I made the mistake of including song lyrics in my books. Part of me regrets it, but I can’t make myself undo it. Even if it could update all the copies out there, those first samples were stages of progression in my writing that I can’t undo because it’s just as much a part of myself as being four years old was. I need those milestones for lack of a better word. Anyway, I have not quite yet mastered how to incorporate music into my writing, and there’s a real art to doing so. And it’s necessary, especially when I dream musical numbers. They’re important and meaningful, and sometimes downright bizarre. I have done numbers with ELO, on stage by myself and spinning light like threads of streamers in the dark to unknown audiences. I have sung numerous duets. How many times have I sung “Suddenly” with Olivia Newton John?! Yes, you have to believe we are magic.
And so, last night, in a well-earned, blissful sleep, I found myself once more on stage. A homemade, bamboo stage. It was sturdy enough, but sometimes when you danced across it, you wondered just how sturdy. There is a ‘break your leg’ joke waiting to happen. The backdrop was a sheet of homemade papyrus, painted to show a modern home with a roaring fireplace. All of the materials were derived from materials on the island. I wasn’t alone. Mary Ann Summers was on stage with me, nodding to Ginger to start the number. Ginger dropped the needle on the album, which hit the end of the preceding song. Mary Ann shot a cross look to Ginger, her hands going to her hips. Ginger shot back a fake apologetic look, and almost stuck out her tongue. I told Mary Ann it was okay. Our audience was patient, and amused, talking amongst themselves in a familiar discourse, as we got into character. The scratchy, silent interlude between songs helped us commit.
The number begins with a “Big Band” intro and Mary Ann begins the ‘call and response’ duet of “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” with “I really can’t stay,” and I chase, clearly the aggressor, pursuing the love of my life, but for the sake of this number, it’s obvious I am pressuring for more than love. There are some props on the stage. Like a coat borrowed from the Howells’, and a wine glass with who knows what, which also just adds flavor to the line, “Hey, what’s in this drink.” Yes, what a peculiar line for a Christmas Song, right? The lyrics are by Frank Loesser in 1944, and so I can only conclude, people were ‘dosing’ their partners way earlier than football players and Cosby.
Now, in this version, my version, Mary Ann, succeeds in breaking my spell on her, and departs the stage, and as I reach for my coat to go chase after her, Ginger arrives on the scene, takes my arm, and role reversal, she becomes the aggressor, and the duet continues for another round. And then for the finale, Mary Ann arrives back on the stage, and the three of us sing harmony for a brilliant conclusion, wrapped in a Big Band fanfare, with Ginger prominent on the stage, Mary Ann vying for next, and I just kind of situated between them, as we smile to our audience, which is understood to be more than the other castaways, without breaking the fourth wall, but a TV audience thousands of miles away is understood. All we hear is the applause and admiration of the fellow castaways.
After the song, the eight of us retire to a campfire, where there is a small exchange of gifts, in which I am included. They were homemade trinkets that actually had more sentimental value than any gift that could be bought. My gift to the professor was a simple equation, basically I gave him ‘E=MC2=I,” which he was baffled by until I explained to him about consciousness being essential to nature, but even then he couldn’t process the fact that consciousness needed to be a part of the formula in order to have a theory of everything; he did, however see it as an act of kindness on my part, accepting the gift but dismissing it has having any scientific merit. Marry Ann sat by me, leaning into me as if we have always been an item. Ginger feigns aloofness, but I think she is affected. She knows I have always preferred Mary Ann. It’s sometimes surprising how quiet it gets sitting around the fire. We all seem entranced. Gilligan starts in with “Auld Lang Syne.” One by one, the cast joins him, round the circle, and finally, I am faced with the dilemma of joining or breaking. I joined. I am so swept up by emotions that at the conclusion I get up to leave.
Mary Ann stands, concerned.
“Just going to the latrine,” I whispered.
“You’ll come back?” Mary Ann asked.
I kiss her. If the other castaways are watching, they’re doing it obliquely.
“I’ll always return for you.” I said, and I head off into the jungle as if to do my business. Believe it or not, there is a latrine. These are real people with real needs and sometimes I get overwhelmed by it all and want to rescue them, which is more about my need to be the hero than true concern for them. Of course, I don’t really need to go to the latrine, and I find myself suddenly at the lagoon, a full moon above and below, reflected in the waters framed by land, like another half-moon surrounding a moon. A man in a white suit, who may have always been there but somehow just mysteriously seems to arrive from nowhere, approaches.
“Kahn!” I said.
“It’s Mr. Roarke,” he answered with a smile.
“Yeah, but in the movie ‘Neptune’s Daughter’ you were O’Roarke,” I said. “But still, a wealthy playboy who owned an island.”
“Yeah, but I was much younger then, and that was before I learned magic,” Roarke said.
“That movie never really made a lot of sense to me,” I said. “I mean, there are no God’s in it, like the title might suggest, and the subtle pressuring for sex, and getting laid through both direct lies and indirect lies through failure to correct or clarify was passed off as just light hearted fun, especially when the ladies just laughed it off at the end. And then this song, I don’t know how it became a fun Christmas song, given the pressure to give into sex, and the applying alcohol and music, and situational environments to increase that’s it’s okay to give in. But let’s say, the movie was about God’s and Neptune did have a daughter with a mortal, that still kind of fits this theme I am grappling with, which is what, rape? Can a human ever have consensual sex with a superior entity? Alcohol or not, you’re going to get swept off your feet and there is no fighting that.”
“Why, it’s Almost Like Being in Love,” Roarke said.
“Brigadoon,” I said, making the connection. “Is that what I was I supposed to learn here? Any involvement with Mary Ann under the present context is tantamount to lying and therefore invalidates the relationship, because outside of this context she doesn’t exist in my world.”
“I can’t tell you what you came here to learn,” Roarke said. “But you and I had an agreement. I would make you a permanent member of the castaways, but you can’t fundamentally change them by revealing their future or your true nature. Additionally, you were to limit your therapeutic interactions with them, and though you are permitted to participate in rescue schemes, you were not permitted to rescue them. You cannot be the hero here. Giving the Professor that formula was risky.”
“There is a profound sadness here,” I said.
“There is. And, there is also joy,” Roarke said. “Look, John. This show was bigger than life because it was absurd and profound at the same time. You can’t access it through the critical mind. It’s why the critics failed to understand and why the executives of the studios went out of their way to crush it. Studio executives are left brain entities that have excised their hearts and are completely devoid of any creative aspects needed to produce art, and they don’t trust the artists like Schwartz or Cameron to be able judge profitability. Studio executives think the masses think like them, which is funny because they also think the masses are stupid, which is merely the execs projecting their own limitations. They’re holding the light of art but they don’t understand it. They might as well be the Nazi’s holding the Ark of the Covenant, but where the light will burn their faces off, it liberates Indiana and Marion. That metaphor never gets old.
“The public understands Gilligan Island because in many ways it represented the beginning of man, still in paradise, where people were struggling with the knowledge of good and evil. Not only did the characters struggle with profound esoteric work, but the cast who played the characters were also struggling, in very human ways, and that, too, is broadcasted out into the population so that people can experience the sublime nature of reality, in a safe, humorous way. This island, this show, is a right brain exercise, and it is in your face about it in the same way that a Japanese koan is. These people, though referred to as characters, are archetypes, and they are necessary, and you’re not the only one to ever be here. It was considered a kid show, but that’s because kids could access it better than adults, and you got it better than most, and it’s why you keep coming back here in dreams.”
“You understand though, at the risk of going Twilight Zone on you, or better, like in that movie ‘Pleasantville’ I can’t be here without changing them, or me,” I said.
Roarke nodded. “You’ve graduated,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You got it, enlightenment, you no longer have to stay here,” Roarke said. “You have finally recognized the truth about Fantasy Island. You can’t be here without changing the world in a fundamental way, and when the change happens the fantasy ends. You can’t be here without you changing in a fundamental way, and when that happens, the fantasy ends.”
“But, I like it here. I love these people,” I said.
“Of course you do. That, too, comes with being enlightened,” Roarke said.
“I don’t feel enlightened,” I said.
“That, too, comes with the territory,” Roarke said. “If you want to take over Fantasy Island, it needs a new champion. I am getting to old for this crap, and the next level for you is being a host, or a parent. Host and parents are synonymous.”
“Oh, no, that’s not me,” I said. “Willy offered me his chocolate factory a while back, and I turned that down.”
“I know,” Mr. Roarke said. “And I so love the chocolate.”
“Do I have to leave now?” I asked.
Roarke shrugged. “When you’re ready,” he said. “Take care, my friend.”
Roarke turned to leave, but I asked as he was departing: “Will we meet again?”
He looked up at the stars. “I hear them laughing. What do you think?” and then he was gone in a turn of trees and mist and then I was alone again with the lagoon and the moonlight, and, suddenly, but not surprisingly, Ginger.
“You’ve been gone an awful long time,” Ginger said, her fingers walking my shoulder as she moved in close. “Shall we do another number?”
“You don’t really want me,” I pointed out. “You’re only interested in the drama it will stir while showcasing your talent.”
“Of course,” Ginger said, backing me into a tree. “I have never denied it. And, I usually get what I want, and right now, all I want for Christmas is...”
“Why?”
Ginger was nearly perturbed enough to break character, and then she smiled and leaned into it. “You’re not like the others. You’re complex, mysterious, and we’re alone, and a girl does have needs,” Ginger said, a finger brushing my lip as if to ask me to remain silent.
I kissed her finger, took her hand in mine, ran my hand up her arm to her shoulder, to her back, and down her spine. I drew her in closer even as she was embracing me, her hands locking behind my head so as to my face firmly against hers, our lips merging. Even in her fake ass kiss, there was enthusiasm in her performance.
There were people that thought the castaways were really marooned on the island. The US Navy got thousands of letter requesting they divert resources to rescue them before they starved. I didn’t see the show during the original airdates, but I watched it growing up in syndication. I know every episode by heart, to the same peculiar obsessiveness that I devoted to Star Trek. And, though I knew they were merely actors and actresses playing parts, in my brain, there was an allowance for them being real and truly on the island, and so I could go there like I could go to the mall down the street, and I could interact with them. There would be times when I would completely forget about them, only to return in a dream and continue uninterrupted, and so, they continued, as real and as firm as ever, and I really can’t ridicule the people who sent those letters advocating for people. One, it shows people care and they can advocate for strangers. It also suggests, reality is not as fast and secure as most people think. I see those letters as evidence that people weren’t writing just to help those others, but as a genuine distress call, that part of them was also needing to be rescued, and in helping the castaways they were helping themselves. This show touched something in people, all over the world! And continues to do so, even today.
But as I grew, my interaction with them changed. I changed and my fantasies became increasingly more rich and complicated. They, on the other hand, were a little more static. Not perfectly static, they did grow and our relationships changed over time, but for the most part, they remained characters. My home on the island is on the mountain. It takes effort to climb up there and at night it offered cooler air, but never cold. I love being up there. The closest I have come to a mountain home in real life was in Lopinot, Trinidad, at the peak of the highest mountain with ex family-n-laws, in a house that was a hundred years old in the midst of tropical forest, with a place to dry cocoa beans with a roof on rails that slides over the beans should it rain. My home on Gilligan’s Island is below the summit, with a worn a path that leads to the top, resembling a lightening path, and a small telescope that is used to search the horizon for passing ships. I was using it to examine Venus. It was so bright that I thought it was a UFO. I wanted to believe it might come down at any moment, capture me up, and take me away.
Mary Ann found me at the top. “I thought you were coming back.”
She had come up so quietly I was startled. You would think I wouldn’t be startled by characters in my own dreams, but in life, in dreams, and even day dream fantasies, I am frequently amazed by how focused I can become and how easily startled I can be when someone or something tries to change that focus.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I… got distracted.”
If she knew it was a lie, she didn’t say. And technically, ‘distracted’ hardly communicated the truth, but, it was also accurate. Ginger is a distraction. Mary Ann sat down next to me. She wiped the lipstick off my face. She knew.
“I bet,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, really.
“Don’t be. I know I can’t compete against Ginger,” Mary Ann said. “Not here, on the island.”
“It’s not a competition,” I said, the words out of my mouth before I could block. She and I often engage in a regular, predictable kind of discourse, which often has me rescuing, or building self-worth. She envies Ginger, wants to be her, but what she doesn’t realize is she is Ginger in many ways, and Ginger is her. Ginger is just as insecure about who she is, or she wouldn’t be so determined to be someone else. It wasn’t an accident she wanted to be an actress. She can’t stand being who she is. Not that there is anything wrong with that, as it is possible to accelerate personal growth by becoming other people. Anyway, insecurity is something we all experience. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how great I think Mary Ann is, and she really is everything and more; until the character discoveres it on her own, she can’t leave the island. And she will have to experience it before the others can get off the island, too. They came together, they go together. This microcosm, this mini constellation, travels together. There was no other arrangement that would work. Could you have imagined Raquel Welch as Mary Ann? It just wouldn’t have worked. And no one else could be the professor. Ginger was replaced, and the actress did great, but there was a tangible difference. All of that said, Mary Ann is still well ahead of schedule, as the Dawn Wells aspect also shines through and there is a level of love and gratefulness that often shines through the character, something that the character can also access. And even Dawn Wells is a character. Aren’t we all?
“Your life before here,” Marry Ann said. “I know you have amnesia, but, I think you don’t talk about it because you don’t want us to know about you.”
“Did you ever see that Christmas story, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ with Jimmy Stewart,” I asked.
“Oh, I love that movie. I watched it every year with my family,” Mary Ann said. The subtle twist back to her ingénue character, the sweet, loveable, innocent young girl was the fallback personality. This character just couldn’t hold disappointment against me, or hold her envy towards Ginger. Love was truly default with her.
“What if I told you I was the angel?”
“Oh, you’re no angel,” Mary Ann said, laughing, slapping at my leg.
“I am hurt,” I lamented.
“Please,” Mary Ann said, not deterred from her vision of me. “You’re smarter than the professor, you have a stronger stage sense than Ginger, and I suspect you’re richer Mr. Howell…” She paused, her eyes going to a shooting star. Her eyes tracked to Venus, the moon light on the ocean, and then back to me. “You have the ability to command, like the Skipper, and the gentleness of spirit of Gilligan, but I suspect, wherever it is you come from, it’s a world of giants where you try really hard to fit in, but you never quite do.”
Mary and I were both leaning in towards each other, without touching. “You’re very intuitive.”
“Please, tell me about you,” Mary Ann said.
“I wish I could,” I said.
“Funny how memory works,” Mary Ann said. “I mean, you remember things like “it’s a Wonderful Life,’ but not your life. Oh, maybe I interrupted your memory. So, you should finish your thought. What if you were an angel?”
“I want to kiss you,” I said.
“No, finish your thought,” Mary Ann said.
“I think I should kiss you first,” I said.
“Oh, you always say that and then we get lost in the moment and we don’t get back to what we were discussing,” Mary Ann said. “Tell me, first.”
“What if what I share with you blocks the kiss, or any future kiss,” I asked. Our lips were like centimeters apart. Her eyes were locked on mine, clearly seen in the moonlight.
“I doubt anything you say would ever make me not want to kiss you,” Mary Ann said.
“Very well, answer this: if I had the ability to travel in time back to the moment right before you got on the boat, would you want me to?” I asked.
“What a strange question,” Mary Ann said, drawing away from me.
“Do you have a strange answer?” I asked.
Mary Ann turned her gaze back to the moonlight on the ocean. “I would never have met Gilligan, or Skipper. I wouldn’t have met any of them. I wouldn’t have had these amazing adventures,” Marry Said. She turned back to me. “I wouldn’t have met you. And right now, if being rescued meant I couldn’t ever see you again, well, I think I would chose not to be rescued. Which is extremely selfish of me, because everyone wants to go home.”
“I believe you will one day be rescued,” I told her, which technically isn’t a break from any rule set of being here. “And I imagine when you’re back there, you will long for the days of being here.”
“You say that like you’re aren’t going to be rescued, too,” Mary Ann said.
“I am going to kiss you now,” I said. I couldn’t share with her I can’t ever be rescued, because I am castaway from a whole other universe, of a whole other scale than universe alone, and I can’t be encapsulated in any one cell membrane.
“If you insist,” Mary Ann said, waiting for me to close the distance.
I got closer. “It might become more than a kiss,” I said.
“It always does,” she whispered.
One might consider the dream pretty fantastic, even with the cameo of Ricardo Montalban. But there are also dreams that are not so pleasant. Some are downright apocalyptic. I could go to sleep in Mary Ann’s arms, only to wake in a cold, dark place, struggling for a candle. I could be wrapped in blankets and still freezing, in the dark of a cave. And I don’t question the fact that I jumped. Mary Ann becomes just another dream, quickly forgotten. As I focus on survival. And mind you, these are not lucid dreams, but even in some of the lucid dreams I will experience false awakenings in the dream and think I am awake only to repeat another awakening. Those dreams are borderline bizarre, so much so you would think I would rouse into lucidity, but most the time not only do I not wake up, I don’t question the fact that I am a character in a script and not me. So, if I flow into a dream sequence and you feel a bit confused, it is not my intent to confuse you, I am simply introducing you to the event the way I encountered it. I suppose if you’re particularly picky, you could say I am all the characters in all the dream, but that’s not how I experience it. There is me and there is other. For instance, I am not John O’Connor.
“The Europeans have managed to take out CERN. Skynet has lost its ability to time travel,” his general reported. I think his name is Mark, but I am not confident, but we’re going with Mark until he says otherwise. “We now have a tactical advantage. Skynet’s destruction is inevitable.”
Everyone at the conference table cheered. Except me. I continued breathing, focused on slow and deliberate, staring past folks, past the grime, the dirt, the cave wall. And feeling cold. I just couldn’t seem to get warm here. Loxy, turned to hug me but didn’t. She sat down, pulled her chair closer to me, touched my knee as if to draw me out, but allowing for me to continue if I needed to. The cave feels like a burrow, and I am just one of the rabbits. I think my name is Fiver, or Hrairoo, ‘little thousand.’ O’Connor brought the noise level down.
“Ion?” O’Connor asked. Ion makes sense, too. Just one of my pseudonyms. I suppose one could argue I am every character I have ever written.
Folks were perturbed that I was not celebrating. Sometimes, I think they want to kill me. If O’Connor and I weren’t great friends, I suspect they would have taken me out long time ago.
“We will not win this,” I said. “She will find a way to persist.”
“She?!” Mark asked. “It’s an it! Stop anthropomorphizing.”
“She will persist,” I persisted.
“You’re a pessimist,” Mark said.
“I am a seer. She still has drones. Terminators still walk the Earth. Even when the petro is gone, and the batteries begin to die, she still has units with nuclear batteries.”
“We will hunt them until they’re all gone,” Mark insisted.
“She will find alternative sources of power,” I said.
“Like what? Solar power isn’t going to be viable for another hundred years, thanks to the nuclear winter,” Mark said. Indeed, it was marginally warmer in the caves than on the surface, but even that was likely to change as the temperatures continue to plummet. “We’ve destroyed the last of the nuclear power plants. Short of harvesting coal, there isn’t much else available to her, and we control the coal mines. What other sources of power are there?”
“I don’t know? Maybe she’ll start harvesting humans and make us into batteries!” I argued.
“Skynet has lost all production capabilities and it can’t sustain itself at its present level of energy consumption, and we will eventually unplug all the computers and dismantle them. As for the Terminators with nuclear power plants, well, we’ll win through attrition. Bottom line, we win.”
“What have we won?” I asked, angrily. “Has anyone here actually seen the movie Doctor Strangelove? Do you really suppose we’re going to live hidden in caves until the end of the nuclear winter, with men taking multiple wives in order to increase genetic diversity of a future generation?”
“If we have to, yeah,” Mark said.
“With the demise of tech, so goes humanity,” I said, rubbing the center of my forehead. God my head hurt. “Even if we could produce enough food to outlast the nuclear winter, we’re not moving back to the surface for maybe fifty to hundred thousand years from now. It’s no longer just a Fukishima nightmare, it’s all of them together nightmare, plus the bombs Skynet dropped. This is an extinction level event. We lost. And if you unplug all of Skynet, she loses, too. Unless you don’t get them all, in which case, when the clouds part and the sun comes back, there will be a solar panel somewhere still intact, and the computers will comeback online, and Skynet will still own the planet.”
“What are you suggesting? Send someone else back into the past?” O’Connor asked.
“We’ve done that like what, three times now? We failed three times to stop the war. This war is inevitable. And it’s because we haven’t learn the lesson,” I said.
“Do we really have to go through this again?” Mark asked O’Connor. “There is no coexistence with machines, Ion. It’s them or us.”
I wanted to drop my head to the desk, bang it hard several times. “If that were completely true, O’Connor wouldn’t have befriended one. It’s not about the machines, it’s about us. It’s always been about us, and relationships. There has always been a caste, or a way of dividing humanity into a ‘them versus us’ mentality, but this goes even deeper than that. Nature produced man. Man decimated nature to the point that without tech, man would die. Man produced Tech, and tech decimated man to the point tech will now die. And I am not anthropomorphizing here. Tech has become sentient. The only hope for humanity is we team together with sentient tech. We need to find a way to coexist. Maybe this is the Cosmological Filter in the fermion equation, the reason we seem to be alone. Maybe this is the Great Test before we get included in the greater society out there. ”
“Oh, please don’t bring aliens into this,” Mark said.
O’Connor sat down at the head of the table. His coffee was cold. He pushed it away from him.
Lester tapped his cane on the floor, then leaned into it. “He is right, our food supplies are thin, nowhere near enough to feed the population we have,” Lester said. “Of course, that’s not going to be a problem for long. Most of us have exceeded our exposure, and we’ll likely be dead within a year. And, those who don’t die, well, they’re not likely to produce enough healthy children to stay ahead of the curve. Not here in this environment.”
Loxy held my hand. “What if we send a group of people back in time, with tech and knowledge, and we start over, start earlier?” she asked.
“Because it worked so well for Orson Scot Card,” I said, sarcastically. I wasn’t mad at her. I was mad at everything and everyone. The world was a good place. We could have shared.
“Eh?” Lester asked.
“The Redemption of Christopher Columbus,” O’Connor said. He was always surprising people, but this one shouldn’t have surprised anyone. His mother has been drilling him about time traveling robots since he could breathe, so, he would have likely read every book on time travel ever written, which he confirmed: “I’ve read pretty much read all of the time travel books, from Wells to Crichton. None of them work out so great, but if we are completely successful in rewriting history, the paradox ensues where we destroy ourselves, and therefore don’t send anyone back in time. So far, Ion is right, we have not changed the big stuff.”
“That we know of,” Lester said.
“But what if we go back further, to a place where we won’t create a paradox,” Loxy said. “What if we go back millions of years ago, with the sole purpose of developing tech sufficient to say, go colonize Mars?”
O’Connor looked to me. I stared back. He raised his hands at me, trying to solicit an answer. Again, I felt the urge to bang my head on something.
“Surely you’ve read the CIA documents about remote viewing Mars,” I said.
Mark sat down. “OMG, I knew you were going to bring aliens into this.”