The Reality™ Institute

This is a couple excerpts from this thing I was trying to write. They’re the only parts of the thing that I didn’t feel I needed to change because it was what it was. The thing was going to be called That’s Not It Exactly: A Clinical Analysis of Generalized Ontology Disorder.

Good luck and enjoy (if anybody’s out there).

Excerpt 1:

Before there was a Big Bang, nothing ever happened because there was nothing to do and there was no one to do it. Needless to say, everyone was bored and upset. So they decided to have something to do and to be someone to do it.

Excerpt 2:

It was a machine obviously designed for death, an enormous bullet that fired itself up to speeds of 160 miles per hour and exploded on impact, and it was heading right for her. Maybe she just woke up in there because, really, Hachi didn’t remember even driving in the first place. She certainly didn’t expect to all of a sudden see some car heading right for her with its headlights and blaring radio. The driver’s face was red with anger and sticking out the window. She couldn’t be sure, but it appeared as if he was aiming for her, gunning her down with a Jesus Fish hanging from the rearview mirror. Admittedly, she was a bit drunk, but it was just hard to believe that even one murderer would populate this miscellaneous road in the middle of nowhere.

“Things have been weird lately,” this was earlier, when she’d only had two beers, “but something just woke up inside me and told me to just go.”

“Was it that easy to leave your mom? Your life?”

“Yes.”

“Things have been weird all over though I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t been watching the news?”

“I don’t go out much.”

He looked at her with severe skepticism. His eyes examined her intently to determine the contents within and if she was indeed real. She hadn’t really said what she wanted to say. There was something exciting and meaningful in her life. It began last night and like a terrible bout of love, she wanted to tell the whole world. Last night, she had found god. He spoke to her, of all people. She smiled, thinking of this.

“Anyways, my life’s going to be different now.”

“Yeah?” he regarded her differently, trusting her words less and less. They were not on the same wavelength. She noticed nothing; she lived elsewhere.

“Yeah. I’m going to go out and do things. Actually do them. And I’m going to be happy. I can feel it.”

“You sound pretty confident,” he looked forward and sipped his beer.

“Well, let’s just say, I kind of know it. I have,” she laughed coyly to herself, “some information.”

He got the money out of his wallet and put it on the table.

“Actually, can I tell you something? I really wanted to tell some-“

“Listen, honey, we all heard him.”

“Huh?”

“Yep. ‘S been talking up a storm. Whole fucking world-“

“You heard him? What’d he say?”

“Told me that Empire™ had next day installation on carpet. ‘Told him that I had already installed new carpet two days ago. He told me, ‘Oh, never mind’,” the man stood up, “Good luck with that.” He said bye to the bartender, who didn’t flinch, and left.

Hachi had never been drunk in her life until that night. She drank and drank and drank. Drank and drank and drank. And started talking with strangers. To a trucker with a big, fat, hilarious beard and bike chain around his neck, framing his t-shirt that said, “Christ Goes Fishing for Sinners” she said,

“And can you believe it? My God! I mean my God. Talking to everyone like a two dollar- like a two dollar street lady.”

“A whore.”

“Exactly like that.”

“You’re telling me. That whore told me to invest in a money market account 2 weeks ago and I haven’t seen a goddamn dime.”

Another local spoke up, “Took up wheel throwing ‘cause of that whore, to make pottery and all. Broke my finger!”

“Ordered the lobster for dinner on his account. You know, ‘cause he’s the almighty?”

“How was it?”

“Not bad.”

Hachi was feeling drunk alright. She screamed at some folks, “You stay away from my God. You hear that? Away. I miss him so much though, you know? I miss him so much. Where’d he go?”

“When’s the last time you heard him?”

“This morning.”

“What’d he say?”

“Rise and shine, sunshine.”

“That’s not so bad. Kinda sweet though.”

A man came up behind her with some other man and maybe the other man looked like the bartender, whatever that was. He put his hand on her shoulder.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Lady, you gotta go. You’ve had enough.”

A radio announcement blared in her skull. She wept graciously upon his return.

“I can’t. I can’t! He’s telling me. He’s telling me. I gotta.”

“Honey, please, you have to go.”

They began to pick her up by the armpits- “No! No! He’s telling me! I gotta!” – and threw her out on the street where she got into her mother’s car.

It appeared to be five in the morning, the radio was telling her, and it could have been Nebraska or Colorado. Either way, at this rate of speed and with her reaction time severely impaired, she could not possibly avert disaster.

“Looks like we got ourselves another drunk one, huh?” he asked his invisible co-pilot. “Hoo!”

And explodo!, they crashed.

She never felt like waking up again after the crash. She hadn’t actually hurt herself too badly. It was mostly just that she was now sober and could remember what it was that had gotten her so drunk. The other man was clearly dead. It was no use trying to pull him out or nothing. Even without a mortal scratch on her, she did not believe in anything anymore.

She walked and walked and walked and walked, eating only her thoughts and with the vacuum of space, felt satiated. The stars grew distant. And she felt more content being the only thing that could possibly exist in her world as far as she was concerned.

She felt the impulse to take this opportunity to make her final move towards an eternity of relaxation, but knew that it had not felt right. It had not felt right. She could still feel something pulling at her. This thing that wanted her to be pulled because it did what it was and was what it did was the same thing she thought that created all the spider webs and all the Chinese finger traps in her world (or whatever resembled quicksand in other universes that did not have the same things as her own). She reached blindly in the blackness of space and felt for the imaginary switch that she believed existed, into the event horizon of a black hole that contained the power box of gravity, and flicked it to the off position. There she could no longer feel pulled, but could only feel free.

But, this could not be the end of it, thought the young millionaire. He reasoned that this machine, which made things obsolete, was not the final piece of technology, the end all be all of all of the above. Sometime, someone, somewhere would point the thing at itself.

The superconducting super collider had been built and cost billions of dollars as well as the manpower and time of thousands of constuctioneers and scientists. Its goal was to create the Higgs boson, which it did.

The Higgs boson, whether it called itself that or not, was its own antiparticle.

In the Universe, where all things are equally possible and not possible, there is a point where one can be both inside and outside of the Universe. At this point, one can see the entirety of the Universe without ever leaving it.

Once every infinity, a clan of beings of unknown origin and capabilities, which have glowing neon rings for hearts located in their heads, take their collective mind, remove an essential component, and conceal it in clever hiding spots throughout the semi-solid gelatinous cube of reality. First, they put themselves into pods that are ready to open up into reality, so that upon removal and hiding of this piece of their brains, they can experience amnesia and find themselves alive in reality where they have to spend infinity trying to find out where their brain is. They’ve been doing it for so long (infinite infinities) that they don’t remember why they’re doing it anymore. When questioned, they might respond, “Tradition!”

They had secret meetings in the underground of the unconscious, which they remained ignorant of, as it was the only way that they could keep themselves and their secrets safe. And it was the only way that they could keep the game interesting. They went blindly and thoughtlessly in the night, during the time at which life went to sleep and dreams came to live, and it was always nighttime somewhere in the world. In these dark alleys and abandoned warehouses, the most illicit of materials were stored for safekeeping. The warehouses had all types of insurance and if anything kept there were destroyed, it could be easily replaced at little to no cost. The materials were sorted over by the individuals, pamphlets describing brutal acts of violence and passion with pictures to boot. It was all sprawled out on old wooden tables. The members were sitting around in disguises they had picked up on entering the unconscious world, with accents and faces that were not their own and saying things that they would never dream of saying.

It made little to no sense, what they were saying, because it was all in code, which could not be decoded by any conscious, rational mind. The words were random assortments of things they had retrieved on the other side and were essentially meaningless when removed from the tangible world. It was the emotion behind the words that counted more or less. The topics ranged from the paltry to the plaintive to the plain ridiculous. Cigars were smoked and cigarettes did not ash until everyone in the room agreed to will them to ash. Though they had their disagreements, they simply disarranged them until their thoughts and sentences resembled something newer that could hold their attention for the time being.

This was the place that they could enjoy themselves. It gave them time to take a break from the game they had created and talk about it or talk about whatever they wanted until time was called and the players had to rejoin and play War again. Out there, where the game was fixed in advance and would be less interesting if the players knew which half of the deck held the winning hand, they would have to give up their souls again to people who didn’t care about them and who would murder them if they ever found out what it was that they really did in their dreams.

Just before reaching the end of their eternal game of Easter Egg Hunting, they attain a pinnacle of life in which they have almost as much knowledge as needed to call that the game is “finished”. At this point, the entirety of society has focused all of its energy on the Ultimate Theory of Everything. They are a super race and each individual member is able to manipulate the basic building blocks of life. If someone is sick, with fundamental knowledge of their own body and the strings that cause its existence, they can mend themselves. No one can die. They can, however, choose to become pure energy to keep overpopulation of everything from occurring. They can make food out of thin air by recombining molecules into other things, turning water into wine or vice versa. This is the knowledge the alchemists had. And the Egyptians. And every great society that ever lived. Now, however, with the vast interconnectedness of all civilizations on Earth, and all planets carrying life, and all universes carrying planets carrying life, and all multiverses carrying universes carrying planets carrying life, they do these things instantaneously as one hive mind where each cell is life that thrives and enjoys itself.

They have found themselves towards the end, almost finally remembering that they had done this to themselves. A voluntary choice to perform a frontal lobotomy on themselves with one hand tied behind their backs and tools that hadn’t been cleaned in nearing on an infinite number of eons. They had dashed their own brains out, unsure as to why.

In the semi-solid gelatinous cube of reality, which was as thick as it was thin and mercurous, the beings had approached, and at break neck speed, the asymptote of a kaleidoscopic door which seemed to have no frame, hinges, or knobs and locks of any kind anywhere on it. Though the colors were hard to determine, many times it was a symmetrical pattern of mostly red dissected with broad blue lines and orange and yellow polygons which flared with each breath that the door made. It became clear to the civilization that this door led them to a recycling of what they had already gone through, through the operating room in which they had unoriginally drilled a tiny hole into their forebrains and back into the thing that was a game that’s rules did not resemble anything human minds could yet understand.

It was a terrifying door, this door with no seams. They looked at it and stood back in horror at what they had done.

I’m telling you he was looking like he’d been staring at the same thing for a hundred years and had never gotten used to it. Some guy was standing right next to him and he wasn’t sure what the guy wanted. At first he responded humbly and amiably, waiting to hear what he wanted, but the guy never asked, but just stood there. Then, he began to be troubled by his presence because if he wasn’t going to request something, then what? Maybe this guy, who from the observer’s perspective didn’t exist, from this poor man’s perspective was gonna hurt him. Or, since now some more time had passed, something far worse, something he couldn’t imagine. And still more time had passed and nothing happened and the guy got used to the stranger standing there. Though he was almost 100 percent sure the man wasn’t going to do anything, that he might not even be real, there was something far more unsettling in the back of his mind. He couldn’t tell if it was the hallucination of the stranger or his reaction to the hallucination that scared him. So he sat there on the bench and aged when I passed by there in California with my brother and sister and saw his blue eyes,

Honestly,

Among all of the newly created insane people of the world who heard the voice of their creator constantly echoing in their skulls, there existed someone who remained on the level. Level headed as she may have been, she could not be distinguished from anyone else. Furthermore, she knew the way to create peace, love, and understanding in this crazy mixed up world. So, on the streets, stirred in with all of the delusional voices, she tried to tell people to relax, calm down, and to think rationally.

“People! People! I know what I’m talking about. I know I might sound totally nuts, like all of the others, but I promise you, I’ve thought this all through very thoroughly, and I know that I can help. So if you’ll just listen to me for one min-“ before she was cut off by a man driving his motorcycle of divine intervention slowly into the front door of a café, honking his horn and revving his engine so that customers would move out of the way. And once again, she was drowned out by the sound of the chaos.

But she was absolutely right. What she was saying was true. She did know what enlightenment was, but it was literally impossible to communicate it.

In it he saw the layers removed one by one by force, winds rushing by at the speed of light. He saw the time he had gone back in time to when he was three years old, through the tunnel, into that time when he needed a blue marker from a girl in preschool but he was too nervous to ask, so he colored the water peach color, and he felt a memory of a glimpse of the future but wasn’t sure what it was because he was only 3 and who knows what anything is. The glimpse, however, was of a future of miscommunication he would probably never overcome because first he’d have to explain to them why no one listened to him. But then he’d just end up doing something he probably wouldn’t really want to do, like be an advertising executive or some stupid thing and spend the whole time trying to communicate like regular folks and end up spouting nonsense like “I have seen the future.” Fnuck that, I’ll build a tunnel through space-time and tell myself that in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to tell myself in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to tell myself that in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to tell myself in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to tell myself that in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to tell myself in five minutes I’ll be traveling through space-time to creating an infinite loop until I see just how ridiculous the idea itself is and not just the outcome (the actual ability to travel through time) and once that is understood, what was the memory again? The memory was something that made it so you kept the days together. It reminded you of the people that were around. But it was more than that. Just don’t remember what it was. Or something like that.

It had something to do with connected the more before to the more after but sometimes it remembered things before the before even happened, which was surprising at best. This phenomenon had been named daily, but its strangeness could never wear off completely. If it were to completely wear off it would not be what it was anymore anyways in any of the ways that it were aware of. Of course it would remain waiting for someone to come by and experience it. It was the family at the train station which shook hands and gave hugs when arriving and gave equal warmness when leaving the strange feeling. Until, of course, you were to have it again, which always seemed to happen whether you wanted it to or not. The memory that is. Or the thing that was before the memory had time to remember itself as well.

An unrecognizable man, not the same man responsible for the future Virginia Tech shootings (where un-understandably the man entered, loner as he was, and shot a lot of people) but later to be also known as ex-cop Fredrick Richards, filled the girl with gasoline, pounded like a drum machine, filled her with gasoline. What became of the man machine? The seemliness remained to be unseen, underneath the girl’s unseemly seams. Out come the guts and the mean man’s spleen as arsenic tends to make a seen man clean and a few men chew. Pure and rotten like a Chinese vase, flowers dead and a nation defaced, interviews were placed somewhere in space for a family to mourn the plight of a race,

“This is undoubtedly a hate crime, without a doubt a crime of hate,” but no matter what you say the saying’s framed by Framers, farmers, and the defamed.

Sayings once concocted by cocky Cockneys made it easier for the folks to take the heat out of the kitchen. Once the heat was taken out of the kitchen and put into the frying pan, the kitchen was remodeled for easier mobility of housewives and young mothers to raise kids into higher social classes where teachers taught them how to be sociable, lovable, and above all, kindly clubbable.

Had Fred “the Dick” Richards joined one of those clubs, been able to take those classes, or remodeled his kitchen with kitsch from the local thrift store, it would have been a different story. He could have been able to say, “Hi, I’m Fred and I hate black people,” or “The serving spoon is placed into the soup like so,” or “Do you like this? It was a steal at Goodwill,” instead of Richards filling the girl with the gasoline. It was, in essence, a mistake in time and space. It wasn’t that Fred was filling the girl with gasoline, but his squad car so he could fight the dirty doers and bad guys ten years ago before being laid off. And it was a drum machine doing the pounding; only the drum machine had extended its heart into the body of Richards in order to beat.

The jury deliberated. Juror number 5 knew, for a fact, that he was God, he just couldn’t remember why or how. The jury then decided that it was not a hate crime, though by all appearances it was. Not a hate crime in the usual sense at least. Because when you asked any of his character witnesses, his wife, his co-workers (other ex-cops), and boss, he had not expressed a previous hatred for the African-American community in the past but had donated to a local, mostly all black basketball team. Sure, the donations were made in the form of a wager in game six of the play offs and the team was the Chicago Bulls, but the case was dismissed is the point and his name washed of its dirt and blood, under the fingernails and over the rainbow. Criminals convicted of misdemeanor charges, such as drunk driving, were sentenced to the cleaning of the filthy name of Fred Richards. In a group decision, they changed the name to Fred Smith.

This train, however, was moving much too fast. It wasn’t distinguishing between memories and non-memories and the memories before the memories anymore. Childhood photos flashed by the windows of the train lightening fast and it wasn’t sure why he was looking at them in the first place. They were recognizable faces, often times his own, but he could not distinguish the time element involved. That seemed to be part of the problem.

Had justice been served a plate of bacon and eggs? or did it merely wait idly by while someone shook the idol with its contents inside until finally it left for another restaurant where discrimination did not take place, or if it did, it was at least less obvious and hard to discern what was really happening around here?

The tracks sent a vibration through the train that he did not want to feel at that moment, a moment in which he was feeling a great deal of motion sickness: sickened by the idea of motion and what it entailed for the passenger of the motion. It was clear that he was not sick and only experiencing what it feels like to have a fever.

“I’m gonna ride this fever out ‘til it feels gooooooood!”

His mind was a forefinger and thumb, combined, pinching themselves and the feeling was not pleasant or unpleasant. The feeling was definitely uncomfortable for some reason or another. Another reason being that it made no logical sense. Some reason being that it had happened before when he was a kid and it was unsettling. Another reason being that its connection to childhood, which was always good, was warm. The understanding of the similes and metaphors took place then at the head of the table discussing how it was one thing to be “like or as a thing” (as a Sugar Ray might “float like a butterfly” and “sting like a bee”) but quite another to be a thing (

All the world is a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances

). Which is not just a closeness in the way that acquaintances are close, but the closeness of intimately knowing a person, place, thing, or letter. For instance, why someone would even choose a favorite color or why the number 3 isn’t too friendly, and not as bright as 9 or as chameleon-like as 4, but that isn’t to say that 3 isn’t a bad number, just not so friendly. And, now come to think of it, 3 is blue which is a color that I have never liked so much as green, which 9 was in the flashiest way possible and 4 was when it wanted to be. This synthesis explained, as the Metaphor extended, how just by feel alone one can know in his or her bones how a Simile is in some ways not as warm, that is to say close, to a Metaphor. “But how a Simile is easier to understand by some folks,” added the Simile.

The eventual merging of all things, dimensions, and consciousnesses could be another explanation, but he would have to wait it out to actually see if this were true. But he felt, deep in his bones, that all things were made of the same thing but that he just-couldn’t-quite-feel it yet. Yet.

As a scientist he knew the exact chemical make up of food, and was able to create a cake out of imaginary thin air. The thinness of the air was not imaginary. It was the air itself. The cake felt real and tasted better than real. He ate without a knife and fork.

From a distance, he watched things being built. He watched great works being painted, jokes being told, houses constructed, ideas formed, babies and Barbies™ burped and birthed. It was never enough. The building kept on building kept on building kept on building. The Engine’s Engineer Engined the Engine’s Engine’s Engine.

Ingenious Japanese scientists built a robot that’s mind learned and created in the same way as a human mind learns and creates. It took a lot of trial and error. They would build one that was barely functional and then not know what to make of it. Again and again feeling a bit better with each model, until the anxiety set in again and, also, the ache that they did not know what to make of it. Finally, they had achieved something not unlike a human being. It was a baby of sorts made partially from stem cells grown into organs and of metal and plastics. They had named it “It”. With big, brown eyes, the baby looked up at the scientists and cooed, curtains drawn and the music beginning to play,

“Hi. My name is It. It is the only name I have and I am sticking to It. And I feel as though It suits me perfectly fine, in fact. It feels custom made, tailored like something one might find in a nice shop in Thailand. My grandchildren think I am a recluse, but it is clear to me that I just prefer not to go out into the sun because the sun burns very hot and can only cause me to have more blemishes on my skin. I know that they talk about me when I’m not there. The angry adolescents and things are very slanderous, saying terrible things like, ‘Fuck It’ and ‘It sucks’ whenever something bad happens to them. As if I don’t have enough on my plate to be concerned with at this very moment.

“I have also heard, ‘I don’t want to talk about It’… ‘Let’s not talk about It.’ Like children they are! ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Perhaps if they cared enough not to ignore me, It would be okay (I apologize profusely for talking in the third person. I know that it can be a real… drag. But old habits die hard and an old man like me dies even harder). ‘It’s okay,’ without even asking. ‘Oh no, It’s fine!’ Mademoiselle excuse me, but I’m right here and if you would chance to notice, you are stepping on my loafers!

“I am not, in fact, venturing to say that there are not those that have some concern for me. I would not dream of believing that, if even for an instant. Yes, they do often ask, ‘What is It?’ or ‘What does It do?’ But I don’t often hear, ‘It does what It wants!’ And can you blame them? People are curious, after all. After all, they’re only human beings.

“Who knows? Maybe I should be happy with being ignored. I could potentially be happy if everyone just got together and said, ‘Let It be!’ Maybe they should just ‘leave It alone.’

“But, mostly overall, when a distracted middle class housewife is in desperate need of her cellular phone, I would like the process to go as follows, as if with a magnifying glass:

‘Okay, I’ll look for It.’ -> ‘I can’t find It!’ -> ‘Where could It possibly be?’ -> (And finally) ‘I’ve got It! Thank God because if I couldn’t call the cleaners by 5, I would have really lost It.’

“And It was good.

“But then, of course, It’s here one minute and the next It’s gone. So It goes, I guess. And It’s one thing to know what It is and quite another to know what It’s not.

“And That is another story altogether.”

It was silent, saying all that It felt that It needed to say. The Japanese looked at It, cocked their heads to the side, raised one eyebrow (the left one), and scribbled on the notepads. What was scribbled, that was sent to a Swedish engineer who would build the same thing for his Swedish people and, not understanding Japanese, had no idea what to make of It.

The tracks thump-thump thump-thumped.

He wanted to put the barrel of the gun, solid, into his mouth. In order to ignite the fire from within, which would set his skin in flames. So he wanted to put the gun, solid, into his mouth and that was all he meant when he asked you if you wanted to go on the camping trip. Why must you read into everything that I’m saying?

On the multidimensional grid that was glowing lines lining blank space, the train traveled in a curved line A (the one being studied) approaching closer and closer to another line B. As one moves along A, the distance between it and the asymptote B tends to become smaller and smaller overall, and eventually never becomes longer than any specified distance. A curve may or may not touch or cross its asymptote. In fact, the curve may intersect the asymptote an infinite number of times, but its maximal deviation from the asymptote keeps getting smaller. For all practical purposes it becomes impossible to distinguish the difference between line A and asymptote B. The ideas were once inside and became outside in so many ways, making his skin indistinguishable from the space that surrounded it. The cargo rattled itself. This was to make unsettling noises to accompany the slide show outside the windows of the train. Focusing only on these noises, he heard the rhythm that separates one word from another. The bars and the leather of one bag said that, “We are definitely vessels.”

A small carry on item then asked, “What do we contain?”

To which a grumpy Genuine Walrus Leather suitcase snorted and retorted in his long drawl, “Who knows, we could just be filled with confetti.”

He decided, not wanting to listen to their conversation anymore, that he would get the cake out of his bag, causing a brief interruption in dialogue. The entire history of everything was based around this cake he had created and he did not know how he should feel about this fact.

Wherever it was that the was was, she could not see or feel anything but her thoughts floating in nothingness. Albert Einstein had caused the Beatles existence, which, in turn, had caused hers, and, if she or cyclical time had anything to do with it, she had influenced them as well, forming a spiral for everyone towards the exit door. That was a nice thing for her to do, perhaps. But whether or not time was cyclical being true had anything to do with anything didn’t seem to matter to anything because anything was going to be anything no matter what it was. It was the same thing that had made her the idea that a hot dog tasted good to a person who liked a lot of onions and relish the belief that the Berlin Wall should be torn down. If her neighbor was going to give those eyes to her, the ones that had castigated her every time she raised her kids badly, she was going to give her neighbor’s eyes to the very same Michelangelo who many believed painted the only thing that ever needed to be painted, then the tunnel could be tapped by multiple straws by all to have a taste. Ideas like time travel instead of time travel for Christ’s sake, but not everyone has the enthusiasm of Doc Brown who made a time machine out of a Dolorean™ and I wonder why that is. Making it so that he looped back again and again for thousands of years until the end of time.

And if she were going to do that, then her feeling of gravity was a thought in itself. Her fingers thought their way through the math buttons on a calculator and her thoughts felt their way through the forest of dendrites and axons of her brain. And that’s why so many people use the word “feel” when they really mean “think” or vice versa.

Then she could feel her way around the room shaped like an aeroplane. A room that moved and flew with the force of a thunderbird and the mind of a machine and could carry her from one room to the next and all she had to do was to sit very still with her hands folded in her lap and make sure not to open the door or she’d be sucked out.

Traveling began then with a trip to one of the bigger private theme parks, the theme being equality for all and American Swine. At the airport in Havana she exchanged her Disney Bux for some Cuban Tourist Dollars and looked for a guide on the outside.

“Hola, como esta?” asked the driver, “Welcome to beautiful Cuba. Where would you like to go?”

“Down. Town,” she said slowly and carefully, as instructed.

“Yes?”

The driver, unfamiliar with the city, pulled over and asked a passerby,

“Por fa, how do I get to the Center?”

“The Center? Take a left up there at the next corner and, why, why, why, oh my God, why?! Then take one more right and you’ll be at the center.”

“So that’s a left, straight, and one more right?”

“That’s right, a left up there and, why, why, why, oh my God, why?! And another right.”

“Thanks.”

Along the way they passed the touristy part of town where people were dressed like it was the 1950’s and the country was still prospering but the buildings around them were well crumbled. Behind the newly painted and constructed parts of town, such as the downtown area, was where the Cuban people lived. If you went to buy some cake there and used tourist dollars, the person would refuse them and Hachi would be confused about what the problem was, only later to find out that the tourists and the citizens of Cuba used different currencies while Capitalism and Communism maintained their friendly feigned feud.

And if you drove along the beautiful coastline, you’d eventually see a castle built by the Spanish on the left hand side and the Center on the right.

Traveling forever, Hachi would look for some overpriced nachos, only to find that

That’s that for the Higg’s Boson, whether it was real somewhere in time or not. Even if we could access the other dimensions that filter our own, I’m not sure it would give us anything we don’t already have. It’s the idea itself that we could even call something a Higg’s Boson or say that the water that breaks itself up into specific points of water is only the particles that make their way into our worldly existence and the rest of it is in the other 10 or 11 space dimensions. And that’s the only reason I wanted to learn about quantum physics in the first place. Jesus.

“Christ Almighty! I haven’t seen a play like that in I’d say 30 odd years.”

“You’re telling me, Jim! Now, I know we’ve been waiting a long time for the Bears to pull through. They won when Mike was just a baby, you know before he wore winter coats with zippers that got caught in the front hallway right by the closet with the mirror and the box of miscellaneous mittens and hats (one of which was a Bears hat). And, well, Jim, things aren’t exactly as expected and people were telling him that all along, actually, but you can’t just know what that means without the experience behind it, Jim. Can anyone blame him for not knowing that that’s what he or she meant when they said, ‘Life’s full of surprises, kid’?”

“No, I don’t think we can, Stan my man. And, whether or not books with stream of consciousness have been done to death or not, they were done for a reason by some people, Stan. At least originally, Stan. People maybe walking around there willy nilly, copying off of one another for lack of a better thing to do, but there are people who are copying with an actual intent, as far as they’re concerned, behind their actions.”

“Jim, I know we’re agreeing on every point here, but how can I not back you up if I think you’re right? Perhaps our speech is written by the same person at the same time (who also does not like tearing down the fourth wall all that much for the same reasons as he doesn’t like using stream of consciousness but at times feels that it is appropriate if he does it for a reason that he sufficiently enjoys and it crosses the threshold of not­-doing it). But, based on all previous experience and everything and with all the information they have at their fingertips, people are going to think all sorts of things about it. They’re going to think that it may be done to death, like you said, Jim, or they might think that it doesn’t make any sense (which comes from a lack of experience with the specific subject or with a lack of experience with the subjective person’s perspectives on the world and his whole universe of experiences) or that it’s repetitive or that it is rambling, long, and boring… What was I saying, Jim?”

“Couldn’t tell you, Stan. Maybe you’d better take a breather, my main man Stan the man Kaplan? Maybe your synaesthesia’s acting up again. Maybe a mild form of schizophrenia?”

“No, Jim, that’s not quite it exactly I don’t think. No, that doesn’t feel right.” He felt woozy. His co-caster was infatuated with him and, even though he didn’t think he had any homosexual tendencies, wanted to kiss him smack on the lips. I guess maybe it was his eyes or something.

It had only been a matter of about 2 weeks but so much had passed that it felt like 5 years and time doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. What was fiver years again? Oh yeah. It was this thing I felt. It felt like 5 years. Who was that that I was talking with? She was the thing I was calling something Mom was what I used to do with her every day the same old thing. Don’t look at me like that, please, Mr: Tree, I’m already seen everything. Isn’t that right. Rasputin was what I used to believe but she, in actualidad, did not know anymore than my father who didn’t remark much on my appearance. I think he mainly peered out, not in like some other dads I knew or had. Though, unfortunately, they weren’t always called dad, but sometimes Stan the Man, Hachi Jyuu Hachi, or my main man.

Not good to live here where I’m living, now is it? Now, is it? Mr. Now, I do believe we’ve met Before. He’s a nice gentleman with a long beard and carpal tunnels syndrome. Oh, pardon, you’re Before. Family name is it? Are you the first Before in your line? Before Now III, regal sounding. Oh, no, I hope I haven’t offended you. Good, good. Because it was merely an opinion you see.

She had to be going then, her will dictated her and its accent was terrible, almost impossible to understand.

As a precaution and out of not knowing what else to do, Hachi walked up the walk to the mansion and its big, glorious, vainous gates. Her chubby finger buzzed the buzzer. The buzzer itself interrupted dinner.

Bertrand Wooster, dressed in white, in a sports coat that was all the rage among a lot of men his age in the clubs of New York, dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin, fully aware that there was nothing there to wipe away. It buzzed again.

“Jeeves, what do they want?”

“I do not know, sir, I have yet to answer.”

“Bloody hell, Jeeves, what in the name are you doing? They’ve been doing that thing with the buzzer for what feels like an hour.” Bertie Wooster was not normally the sort of chappy who took to reprimanding his butler in such harsh tones, but Jeeves had made a rather off-handish comment about the sports coat and, well, a man’s opinion is one thing, but it’s quite another to take the wind out of a chappy’s sails, don’t you know? He turned to say something more, but the butler had dematerialized as was his custom.

“Sir,” reappearing with equal stealth, “it appears to be a young woman who seems to have been in some sort of automobile accident. Should I see her in?”

Bertie Wooster retreated into his thoughts, to sort the whole thing out and all of that rot, consult the old man upstairs. He had thought that that religion stuff was for the stiffs and grandmothers who hadn’t anything better to do but go to church on Sunday, and he certainly was not the type to pray for the sake of it, but he thought he’d give it a whirl. The divine had chosen him after all.

“Jeeves, the Old Boy Upstairs-“

“God, sir?”

“The very same, Jeeves. He’s advised me to let the poor girl in.”

“Hm.”

“What’s that, Jeeves?”

“Nothing, sir, only a brief exhalation.”

“I can tell something’s troubling you, Jeeves. We Woosters have a knack for that sort of thing, you know. ‘A Wooster always knows’ and all that.”

“Well, sir, with all that’s been happening as of late. I would not doubt that, in all likelihood, she is a common vagabond and not the victim of an unfortunate accident.”

Though he did not like to give Jeeves the satisfaction, or to ignore the divine will, he had to hand it to Jeeves. The man did have a point. And he thought he’d be the bigger man and smooth things over with his butler with this one concession. Woosters are good men, you know. “Sorry, Old Boy,” he said to the man in his mind. “Jeeves, I hate to say you make a strong argument. Wouldn’t like to turn her away and all, but I’d also not like to have the fleece pulled over my eyes. Would you please inform her? But don’t be a wet blanket and all that rubbish. Say something that won’t get her spirits all low.”

“I’ll inform her that we are in fact a house of ill intent and that we have heard rumors that the police may be on their way meaning to detain all residing inside the house.”

“Good show, Jeeves.”

The butler began his disappearing act for the door when Berty, aided by keen Wooster timing, added, “Jeeves, my man, I do believe I will put on the blazer you suggested earlier. On second consideration, it does have more of a summer feel.”

“Very good, sir.”

After all, a chappy shouldn’t just leave his man out in the cold like that. Not when friendly relations are involved.