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Chapter 11
After using the facility, I returned to find Jenny continuing to sort through archival stock footage of video and still images, at a breakneck speed that I couldn’t have kept up with. When I found I wasn’t needed, I returned to the facilities and proceeded to get a shower. The facilities was purposely designed for humans, and it was explained to me by the Hath that they had expected to share with the humans. After showering, I put my uniform back on, and even though it was relatively clean, and resistant to odors, I still felt the urge for something more fresh, which may have just been habit. The only signs of dirt was the red paint spot. Had it been a bullet, my heart would have been punctured clean through.
I returned to Jenny, who was still pouring through images at a furious rate. Clearly, she still didn’t need me, so I had a bite of something the Hath had brought us, and made myself comfortable on the floor for a bit of a nap. In that half asleep half-awake space, I thought I heard Loxy talking to me, but then I drifted and was gone into a dreamless moment, only to wake up back on earth to my real life, spent a moment there, and when I returned to sleep, I was waking up to Jenny prodding me.
“You up for a walk?” Jenny asked.
I suspected she meant something more serious than just a walk. There were two back packs full of stuff, ready to go.
“I found an anomaly, approximately two weeks walk from here,” Jenny said.
“And, what about the dragons?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s a bit of a problem,” Jenny said. She showed me a bottle that might have been a perfume bottle, which was an attractive design, with a wine colored liquid inside; too attractive for the skunk smell inside it. “I am proposing we disguise our scent using Hath musk, and, should that fail, I can use my sonic screw driver to scare them away. While you slept, I determined a pitch they’re not fond of.”
“Sounds a bit risky,” I said.
“Risk is my business,” Jenny said.
“No, risk is our business,” I said.
“I know. I was paraphrasing Kirk,” Jenny said. She smiled. “You didn’t think I knew the speech? They used to say if man could fly, he'd have wings, but he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't reached the moon, or that we hadn't gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That's like saying you wish that you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great grandfather used to. I'm in command. I could order this, but I'm not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this, but I must point out that the possibilities - the potential for knowledge and advancement - is equally great. Risk! Risk is our business. That's what this starship is all about. That's why we're aboard her. You may dissent without prejudice. Do I hear a negative vote?”
As she spoke, quoting from the TOS episode, ‘Return to Tomorrow,’ I had risen to a sitting position, bracing myself against floor, with my arms behind me. She was passionate in her speech, mimicking Kirk’s exaggerated mannerisms. And I was mesmerized.
“I think I love you,” I said.
“Is that you speaking, or David Cassidy?” Jenny asked.
“I’ve stop trying to figure that out,” I said. “You sure are knowledgeable for a girl who claims to have slept most of her life.”
“I had a lot of dreams to sort,” Jenny said. She mused. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s something more going on here. I suppose my memories could be future de-ja-vu sorts of dreams, but I have not remembered Gallifreyans being overly psychic or endowed with prescience. We have spread ourselves over the entire Universe, through time and space, and have encounters so many others, merged with some, adopted others, and like humans, we have evolved and continue to evolve…”
“And yet, out of all of that, you keep coming back to Earth,” I pointed out.
“I know, right,” Jenny said.
“Maybe we evolve into you,” I said. “We’ve only started to fly, but you can’t fly without touching time. Maybe you look human because you once were.”
“Or maybe, you look Gallifrayan because you once were us,” Jenny said.
“So, we’ve de-evolved?” I asked.
Jenny shrugged. “Evolution isn’t a one way arrow that always points to new and improved. It only means change, over time. And if you believe your own mythos, every culture believes humans use to live much longer lives than you do now.”
“I wish we, humanity, lived longer,” I said.
“You don’t think you would take life for granted?” Jenny asked.
“I think we already do,” I said. “Maybe if we lived longer, as a species, not just as individuals, we would treat each other better, with greater kindness. Maybe we would treat the world better. If we lived long enough to see the consequences of our actions, we’d be forced to change.”
Jenny offered me her hand. “Come with me.”
“I’ve come this far,” I said.
“So, you’re an ‘all the way’ kind of guy,” Jenny said.
“Ever hopeful,” I said.
We stood, grabbed the gear, which nearly toppled me because I wasn’t expecting the pack to be so heavy, and we met the Hath on the wall. The Hath was waiting for us, with two more fanny packs, attached to belt shoulder sort of harness. He also had a rope. He handed the fanny packs over to Jenny.
“Here are the spare parachutes you asked for,” the Hath said. And now I recognized the pin that was attached to the front of the fanny sack.
“Parachutes?” I asked. “The walls not that high.”
“Oh, no, not for the wall. These are for emergencies,” Jenny said.
“What sort of emergencies? I thought we were walking,” I said.
“In case of dragons,” Jenny said. “Ever hopeful?”
While Jenny and I put on the harness that held the spare belly parachute, the Hath threw our backpacks over the wall. When Jenny finished checking my harness for the parachute, she had me help her with hers.
“I don’t really like parachutes,” I told her, tightening the shoulder strap.
“You prefer falling?” Jenny asked.
“Well, no, but my experience is, if you write a prop into a scene, they eventually have to be used,” I said. “And, we’re spending a great deal of time and effort to put these on, when, well, we were just going for a bit of a hike.”
“Well, one, this is a not b-movie, and two, the dragons like to drop their prey,” Jenny said.
“Oh, yeah, but it’s not the fall that’s going to kill me,” I said. “It’s the claws that carry me.”
“The back pack might take most of that,” Jenny said.
“Ever hopeful,” I said.
We told the Hath we were ready and he threw one end of the rope over the wall, while the other end was tied to a hook in the wall.
“No gate, eh?” I asked.
“Gates can be breached,” the Hath said. “Good luck.”
Jenny climbed over the wall and down the rope, once she was on the ground, I followed down. Once I was down, the Hath pulled up the rope. The wall was truly a remarkable piece of engineering and I couldn’t imagine how they had made it. I still can’t imagine how the pyramids were constructed, but suspect the magic of Jedis using the Force. The Hath stared down at us, waved.
“No need to tarry,” Jenny said, handing me my pack.
Once we were geared up, Jenny used her sonic screw driver to navigate, as reckoning by sun and stars was out of the question. There was one sun, always overhead. We proceeded down into the valley of tortoises and were soon in the thick of them. They completely ignored us, eating strawberry like fruits that grew on small plants peppering the valley. I wanted to watch the tortoises, because they were huge! The average was maybe twice as big those from the Galapagos Islands. These were not Aldabra. They were large enough that if they were cars, Jenny and I could have gotten in one and drove away. Though they were fascinating, I kept finding myself looking up into the sky. Every thirty minutes, Jenny sprayed me and then her with Hath musk, which was fairly repugnant smell, and even after thirty minutes I didn’t think I needed another applications because the smell didn’t fade the way something should when you’ve been exposed for a while.
“I think we’ll be okay,” Jenny said. “Dragon strikes must not occur very irregularly.”
“Because, if it did, the tortoises wouldn’t get this big, with this many?” I asked.
“See?” Jenny said. “Great minds think alike.”
As we walked, bugs, just the old regular Earth variety anyone might be used to, with the exception of being three or four times as large, flew by. A dragon fly hovered in front of us, as a big as a crow, and then went sideways and around us.
“I suspect size is related to the amount of oxygen available,” Jenny said.
I didn’t add a comment or try to be clever. Truth was, I was spent. I was in walking mode now, and well, to be honest, I am an average 49 year old American, and though I like walking, I exceeded my hiking radius several hours prior. But I kept walking. The degree of tiredness had me beyond questioning whether this was a dream. How could this be a dream? I use the toilet, I get tired, and time was passing at what felt like the normal rate. I was so tired I no longer scanned the skies looking for threats. A dragon strike would be a relief.
“I think we should take a break,” Jenny said.
“When we get to the forest,” I said, my voice empty of emotion.
Jenny squinted at the trees. “Probably two, three hours away?” Jenny said.
“They look closer than that,” I said.
“They’re bigger than you think. Your brain is gauging the distance by associating what it knows,” Jenny said. “You’re not use to being inside a planet, with this kind of light, and everything so far is bigger and brighter.”
“We can rest when we get to the trees,” I said.
“Okay,” Jenny said. She was silent for a bit. She produced a canteen and drank, and then offered me some. “You know, you got to keep hydrated, and you don’t have to impress me.”
“It’s not about impressing you,” I said.
“Really?” Jenny said, skeptical.
“You either like me or you don’t, that’s just life,” I said, taking the canteen. “But I’m afraid if I stop, I won’t get started again.” I drank.
“Fair enough,” Jenny said.
“Tell me about where you come from?” Jenny said.
“At the trees,” I said.
An island passed over us and the light diminished greatly. There was sunlight in the distance, but we were in darkness, and above, on the bottom of the floating island, was glowing moss specked on the underside, it was like walking in night under a moving constellation of stars. Jenny stopped to look, but I kept walking. I really did fear stopping. The darkness stayed with us for about a half hour, and the temperature dropped, noticeably. When the sun returned, the shadow of the floating island proceeded us for a while longer, and the forest sparkled with its own light in the shadows.
“Do you record your dreams?” Jenny asked. I am not sure if she was talking to fill the silence or to distract me from my misery and keep me going. “My species, Gallifreyans, they’re called Time Lords, right. They’ve interacted with space/time for so long that they changed genetically: they can feel the flow of space time and the turning of planets. I didn’t think I would notice inside hibernation stasis chamber, but I did. I felt the slow, inevitable push forwards, like a boat on a stream. In the dreams that came I saw lots of people, and through all of that, there was one consistent voice that came to me. One repetitive dream, a voice calling for me to come to it. I think you were in the dream, John, but that could just be me backfilling. The say a TARDIS will often grieve the loss of its Time Lord. Some will kill themselves by diving into stars or black holes. Most go home to a TARDIS graveyard to die, a long, slow, lonely death. I am not sure I understand why more compassion isn’t offered them. It’s clear they’re sentient machines. Anyway, this dream makes me think that there is a TARDIS calling me. Across time and space. I would like to journey to the graveyard and see if I can find it. When we get out of here, and your people come for you, I am hoping you would give me a lift back home.”
We arrived at the nearest tree, close enough to the forest thick that I was satisfied with my progress. I dropped the bag and leaned back against the tree, and slid to my butt. I was done.
“You okay?” Jenny asked.
“With giving you a lift?” I asked. “Sure. Anywhere you want to go.”
“Thank you. I am going to gather some stones and start a fire,” Jenny said.
“Is that wise, given the oxygen content of the air?” I asked.
“It’s why I want the stones,” Jenny said. “To contain it.”
I got up to help with the gathering of stones.
“No,” Jenny said. “You rest. I will gather stones. I need you to be able to walk again, and you’ve over exerted.”
Jenny drank from her canteen and then handed it to me.
“I am okay,” I said, waving it off.
“Drink,” Jenny insisted. “Don’t worry, it has built in tech that pulls water right from the air. It never goes empty.”
So I drank. Jenny went to gather stones. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, there was small fire, and we were under the canopy of a floating island. Being so close to the wall of the forest, the darkness seemed more like a night on the surface, something more familiar. The rock overhead seemed close enough to touch, like a cave closing in on us, but it pushed silently above the tree without scraping a branch. I was enthusiastic about watching until the cramp happened. It was one of those sudden cramps that drove me to my feet, trying to stand it out.
“Fuck,” I muttered, holding on to the tree for support.
Jenny handed me a pack. “Eat that. It’ll help.”
I opened the package and sucked out the contents. I nearly threw up.
“Don’t spit it out,” Jenny said. “That’s it: chew and swallow.”
“What the hell?” I asked.
“It’s just rations,” Jenny said.
“For people?” I asked.
“For Hath,” Jenny said. “But, it’s high in potassium.”
I sat down next to the fire, no longer as hungry as I imagined. I started to rub the back of my neck, and then Jenny slid over behind me and started working out the kinks with variety of pressure point massage techniques. I nearly fell asleep in her care.
“That’s nice,” I said. “Where did you learn that?”
“Progenation device,” Jenny said. “Priority programing was military training, and this is a useful skill if you have fellow soldier that requires a quick fix to get him back into service. But enough about me. Tell me about your world.”
“It’s rather boring,” I said.
“Tell me any way,” Jenny said.
“You’re really interested?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have asked, otherwise,” Jenny said.
“I am not joking, most of it’s really boring,” I said.
“I am not sure if your avoiding because you’re hiding something, or ashamed of something,” Jenny said, pushing in on my back with her elbow. I heard a pop and there was a flood of release and I gasped. “You kind of remind me of my dad, at least, what I remember and what I have sorted in dreams. You talk, and you’re open, but there is this bubble of protection that deflects people away from knowing the real you. Maybe that’s a survival skill. I mean, imagine being the Doctor, living thousands of years, meeting new people every day, every week, and they all ask the same question, who are you, where did you come, do you have family, and I can imagine it being sort of a hell having to revisit your loves and losses every time someone asks. I think I would admire someone who doesn’t ask me about my past, especially since I hardly have one. At the same time, there has to be an equal number of joys to counterbalance any string of losses. I don’t know how long I have, John. I am the daughter of a Time Lord. I could live up to ten thousand years or more. I can’t even fathom that! I look forward to remembering some grand adventures, but the treasures I will cling to are the quiet moments, like this, sharing a conversation, warmed by a fire, as a continent size rock floats above us, between us and an inner sun. And the reason I will remember it, is because you shared you.”
“I don’t even know how to begin,” I said.
“Start with Origin,” Jenny said.
I sighed. A part of me wanted to avoid talks of Origin. “I don’t know how to tell it,” I said.
Jenny stopped massaging me. I think she was going to get up and walk away, and so I turned to her and touched her arm, and she hesitated.
“No, you asked, now listen,” I insisted. I was serious. She became serious, respecting the struggle that I was having. “When I say I don’t know how to share this, I mean I don’t know how to do this. I am struggling. I just ended a second failed marriage. I don’t know how to communicate relationship stuff without disparaging her, as I don’t won’t to do that. My ex is a human being, and she has wants and needs that we had been unable to negotiate and so, she is departed to find a way to meet those needs. That’s reasonable. I am trying to be reasonable about it. Partly because, I am just so tired of being angry. My family of origin is broken, substance user, frequently in and out of jail, and there has been generational sexual and physical abuse, and I cut ties a long time ago. My first marriage ended and I was angry, and getting angry didn’t stop the end, it accelerated it. In order to survive, and gain some semblance of health, I had to make a change in myself. Every day, I have chosen to be grateful and happy, allowing people the freedom to make choices about their lives regardless of my feelings about those decisions. And I have lots of reasons to be grateful. I am intelligent. I have successfully completed a masters, was accepted into a PhD program, and I have a toddler. He will be three years old in March, whenever that is. Time is suddenly very hard to track. And he is the joy of my life. Before he was born, I dreamt of having a time machine so I could travel back and re-write my history, but after my son, well. I would endure my life over a million times just so I can meet him again and again. And he is so happy and bright and so, that is another reason I am being civil with his mother, because he needs his mom in his life. He will never hear me disparage her, and so, I practice that in my every day walk of life, because if I hold a negative thought about her and it leaks, that influences the rest of my thoughts and decisions, and she has the right to pursue her idea of happiness. And here is a truth, thoughts always leak. What you hold gets into the Universe and changes the flavor of everything. So, part of what it means to be an adult, a mature adult, is giving people the space to be.
“But still, I struggle to be grateful daily. Now, mostly I am happy and easy going, and I bring a great deal of comfort to the people I serve. I am a licensed counselor. I have worked in a mental health hospital for over four years and have a private practice. Prior to that, I worked for the airlines and I traveled the world. When I say I have had a great life, I mean it. I have so much to be grateful for. But from childhood till I was forty I struggled with depression, and it’s still too easy to touch it. Simple triggers, like the news can send me plummeting. The other day, for example, I accidentally bump into the news and saw a reports that the Fukishima disaster is much worse than anyone has been letting on, and now there is nuclear fallout discovered in the Atlantic and no one knows the source yet. The Russians having been dumping stuff into the Baltic Seas for years. They’ve even scuttled some nuclear subs that are just down there rusting away, and I would be surprised if the American haven’t scuttled a ship or, too, and I know for a fact that the Apollo missions had nuclear batteries and there is lunar capsule sitting at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the pacific, so it isn’t a matter of ‘if’ there will be a nuclear disaster in the Atlantic, it’s a matter of when. 15 years ago scientist said ‘in fifty years, there will be no more fish left in the ocean.’ Well, people haven’t stopped over fishing, and we’re not focused on developing the science necessary to feed the word, and technically we can feed the world now, but who wants to do that, without making a buck. And so, I am worried about the planet, not for my own life per say, but what are we giving our children? And I wonder, as a counselor, how can I help other folks when I am sometimes just barely getting by myself, but most the problems my clients have, well, we’re not even on the same planet. Much of what looks like mental health is simply legit concerns. I mean, I live on the cusp of an era when mass unemployment is going to rock the world. Computers and automation have made three quarters of the planet redundant! People can’t get jobs and they think they’re broken, but their concerns and reasons to be angry are valid because they were sold a bill of goods all their lives and that is just not what they’re going to end up with. We haven’t figured out how to be unemployed and eat, because we still live with a mentality of people should work or not eat. I mean, I come from Texas which is a pull yourself up by your own bootstraps kind of state, and consequently, they rank 49 in terms of providing mental health services, and most the time, they’d rather just lock folks up as opposed to fixing the situation or people, and maybe part of that is because so many people do fear giving handouts that everyone will stop working and want more handouts, but if you have no boots, you can’t exactly pull yourself up by own your bootstraps, now can you?! But my point is, if tech advances to the point where everyone has access to a replicator, or a 3-D printer, well, then the definition of human productivity has got to change. We can’t keep measuring ourselves by the standards of the past. We have to reinvent ourselves daily.”
I let go of Jenny’s arm.
“And then it occurred to me, and this is a serious revelation. The reason I get angry or depressed, well, that’s because I love my life. I didn’t want it to change and I was hanging on, and ‘letting go’ has become this big theme and I hate hearing it, but it seems that one can’t practice gratefulness without letting go. Letting go of control, letting go of expectations, letting go of the moment, letting go of an ideal of my life, because if the moment freezes then you can’t have compare and contrast… Frequently I feel alone, because the worries I worry about aren’t even on the radar for the people around me, and people can’t relate to me. And I wanted an end to loneliness, and so, I found something and tried it and, well, the bottom fell out of my world and I have no context or compartment to put anything in any more, other than the big box, the universe, that seems to contain it all.
“One of the things I like to do, a lot, is learn. Knowledge is kindness, in my book. I was exploring some esoteric psychological ways of exploring the inner worlds, and I discovered a technique for creating a psychological construct. The Tibetans call them thought forms, or tulpas. I was intrigued. Is it a true thing, or is it imagination, or is a way of opening a direct line to my unconscious? And how is it I can I feel alone when I have a subconscious that is always with me, anyway? So, I created a tulpa. Her name is Loxy Bliss. She named herself. And then, shortly after that, I started meeting these other people. And then a group I called the Invisible Counselors’ showed up, by my request. I didn’t just start hallucinating these folks. I invited them in. And I started having, what I consider to be, huge therapeutic breakthroughs on things I have been carrying for years. I began to seriously question my sanity. How the hell can I be so happy when I know the world is literally falling apart around me, and well, it’s because: I have moved beyond grateful. I see wonder in everything. Every morning I get up, I say thank you bed, and thank you floor, and thank you water, and truck and work and people and sky, and then I see wondrous news like, Trappist-1 has seven earth like planets and I think yay, maybe my son will go there, or be one of the first Martians, because, you know, things may be bad, but sometimes when things are bad is when humanity pushes through to the next level and shines and really reveals who and what they are. And I am not alone. Now I walk hand in hand with someone daily. Yeah, there’s lots fear and anger still for me to struggle with, and there are lots of fools running around with guns trying to take control to diminish fear, but they can’t see it just increases fear. How many can stand up and say they love?! I fear, because I love.
“And, then, the next miracle happened. I was transported. I was offered an opportunity to be a part of something, and suddenly, accidentally, I am here, but it’s somehow connected, and so helping you is a way of helping myself and everyone else who will touch this planet, or any other planet,” I said, my enthusiasm having reached its pinnacle. “Or, maybe, I am just an old fool who is living out his last days in a dream world because the reality is so bleak and so impossible that imagining being joyful is better than running around crying and calling foul and posting conspiracy theories. I am not the smart one who is going to figure out how to solve the world’s problems. I don’t think there is anyone that smart, and I certainly don’t think we should put our hopes in any one person, or a savior, or even a Doctor. I don’t see getting angry and blowing things up as an effective cure. There is only love and only peace and only cooperation. I think it’s something we just have to collectively decide this is what we’re going to do and we’re all going to be on the same page, without being militant or forceful, or protesting when the people we don’t like win the day, because, that’s exactly the fear that we are struggling against that’s bringing us down. And it always comes from within us first, never outside. Outside is the symptom of inside us.”
And then my long winded, scary rant was over, and it was all out of me, and I felt lighter. Jenny touched my face, gently. She leaned in towards me and whispered, “I am going to kiss you now,” and put her lips softly on mine, slowly teased them apart, going deeper. The kiss grew in passion in increments, her hands going behind my head as the kiss deepened. Our artificial night came to an end. She started our kiss and she ended it. Her forehead rested against mine.
My eyes were closed, savoring the taste. Jenny didn’t withdraw. She waited for me to recover and was right there when I opened my eyes. She hadn’t withdrawn, and lingered in range to kiss me again if the signal was given. I was so tempted to re-engage and there was evidence that it would have been okay to do so.
“Thank you,” Jenny said.
“For?” I asked.
“Really? The affection wasn’t self-explanatory?”Jenny asked.
“I basically just admitted to being crazy and having an imaginary friend. Doesn’t that disqualify me for companionship?” I asked.
“Oh, no. That actually raised my esteem for you. Humanity is way too quick to grow up, which probably explains why there are so many control freaks around. To truly access the Universe and all the wonder it has to offer, you got to come at it as a child, and if the only way to maintain that sense of play is to imagine you have an invisible friends, well, then imagine away. But if you really created a tulpa, well, Loxy is more than just a ghost in your head. Clearly she unlocked more of your unconsciousness than you recognize, or you wouldn’t be accessing so many personality sets, and we all have them, locked deep inside us. You also wouldn’t be here, now, with me, if you hadn’t brought her into being and she hadn’t pushed you for more. I see the way you look at me, the way you look at everyone. Studying us like we’re film characters, looking for avenues to engage us on meaningful levels, but always engaging us at the level we are on. I am also well aware that you have secretly undressed me and ran the algorithm that everyone engages in…”
“And that didn’t disqualify me?”
“No,” Jenny assured me. “It was a bit creepy at first, but the more I get to know you, the more comfortable I am with your level of creep, because it also comes with a kindness. A longing. I suspected you have a long history of fantasizing, and your rant just now confirmed that it was likely a survival strategy. But, don’t let your imagined loneliness become a plot contrivance for keeping people out. I have a pretty good idea where that story line will take you. Not firsthand experience, but close enough.”
“Have you ever had an out of body experience?” I asked.
“I have had lucid dreams,” Jenny said.
“Me, too, even before I knew what lucid dreaming was, but I also frequently had out of body experiences. They were a lot more frequent as a child, less during my 20’s and 30s, and then picking up again in my 40’s,” I said. She was holding eye contact, curious where I was going. “So, I am rather use to being out and looking back and seeing my body, but lately, over the last year or so, I have experienced something new. Whenever I encounter someone in the real world, I get that de-ja-vu sort of sixth sense creepy feeling that I am looking at myself. It can be anyone and everyone and it’s a little distracting because I am caught up in wondering am I outside myself or am I dreaming, but I am unable to solicit by will the evidence I need to confirm I am out of body or dreaming.”
“Is it possible you’re not?” Jenny asked. “That maybe you recognize the oneness in us all?”
“Isn’t that a