Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) (27 page)

I explored transcendental meditation, thinking that if I could alter my state of consciousness, I might kick start my brain on the other side. I took psychotropic drugs, trying to affect my alpha waves and alternate worlds… all in a search for the door to ‘reality’. I immersed myself in sensory deprivation tanks, and would spend hours concentrating on nothing but the rehabilitation room and my inert body as it atrophied in a white-sheeted bed.

Giddeon hypnotized me. I hypnotized myself. I would run to a state of exhaustion, looking for that jogger’s high.
 
I thought maybe that that would effect a change and somehow help tip me over into my old world. It didn’t.

Nothing worked. Giddeon would check my vitals in the facility when our experiments were underway. My heart rate never changed, my breathing never quickened.

We went back into the recent past and looked over my records at the institution. We did find a few instances where my vitals had been altered, just the slightest amount, along with my brain waves. Giddeon and I correlated them to the times of strong emotional periods. Mainly, the changes had happened when I had dreamed of Melody… also, the alterations occurred when I found Boris that day on the side of the road.

It wasn’t much, but, at least it was something.

__________

As time went on, over there, I became desperate to get back to her because I found I was feeling more and more disconnected.

Almost a year went by where we shared no dreams.

__________

Giddeon fabricated memories for me, some sweet and tender, some horrific and jolting.

He tried to replicate and expound upon emotional states that had seemed to have had some effect on my comatose body in the past. Even when he did it without telling me, it only had minimal results… I think perhaps that was because he and I were becoming more and more united on a neuronal level. I could always tell, after the initial surprise, that it wasn’t the ‘real’ timeline… that it wasn’t the silver strand that shone so brightly amongst all of the others. I don’t really have any other way to describe it.

I just knew.

__________

This went on for months. Of course, we would take time to recharge… golfing and surfing, along with the occasional trips into time. However, other than the times after the coma began, I avoided the past… particularly anything to do with religion. I didn’t really want to know such history, especially after my experience with Daniel. I think there are some things that should remain a mystery.

That’s what faith is all about.

Also, I think I was afraid of changing things… upsetting some type of balance that would affect me meeting Melody on that sun-drenched afternoon. I just couldn’t take the chance, no matter how remote.

Giddeon came to me one day with an excited look on his face. I knew he had been somewhere, because it had been a day and a half since I had seen him. He plopped down beside me on the couch, and ran his fingers through his light brown locks.

“I found it!” he exclaimed.

I had been reading a medical journal about brain waves. Not just the action potentials generated by neurons, but the calcium flux in the glial cells supporting them. For decades, scientists had considered glial cells as just a matrix of building blocks whose job it was to insulate, nourish and defend the main players… but, it was looking more and more like they were involved in thought, creativity and memory. A lot of the research was being done here at UCSD. I looked up from the glossy pages in my hands.

“Found what?”

“The movie theatre of the future.” He looked very satisfied with himself.

“What do you mean?” I put the magazine down through Boris, who was on the couch beside me. My cat looked at me with a bit of annoyance, so I pushed the journal onto the floor at my feet. He seemed okay with that and put his head back down on his paws.

“The interface… ‘
There’s a revolution in my head’
.” He sang the first part of that song we had written quite some time ago.

“Oh… are you sure?”

“Pretty sure… it’s waaaaay in the future. Further than I’ve ever been. Two galaxies over.” He pointed a thumb in the general direction, and I thought about that old book, ‘
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
’.

“Giddeon… are you sure it’s real? We’ve been through this before. Everything is amorphous, especially the further you get from
the
here and now
. Do you think maybe you’re just finding what you want to find? You know… creating your own memories?”

“You tell me.”

There was a flash, and the longest tunnel of light, yet, surrounded us.

__________

We were in a room. I’m not sure if it was a house or a clinic of some type. The walls were made of metal or composite, I couldn’t really tell since the surfaces were so uniform; no angles were anywhere at the junctions of the floor, walls and ceiling. In the periphery around us there were no doors or windows, and four ‘people’ were on separate, silver, chair-like beds that were off to one side. The beings were small, between four and five feet in length, and naked, from what I could tell… there was nothing to help differentiate male from female in the pelvic regions. Their skin was smooth and pale, and they had no hair anywhere on their bodies… except for eyelashes, which, oddly, were long and luxurious. Their lower jaws were quite diminutive, and their lips had just the slightest blush of pink to them.

They appeared to be asleep.

On the creatures’ heads was a scattering of patches, sort of like those used for an EEG; three on each side for a total of six per cranium. I could see that the ‘people’ were breathing by the rise and fall of their level, nipple-less chests. I turned and whispered to Giddeon, using a low voice out of habit because they looked so peaceful,

“Are you sure they’re human?”

“Oh, yes… just very, very, many years from ‘now’.”

I had endured over three years of ‘air quotes’. That alone should have gotten me a ticket back.

“Wow. They sure look different.”

“Selection and genetic manipulation will do that.”

I shook my head back and forth. “I suppose so.”

We stood there for some time, taking in the group before us. It all was like something out of a movie.

__________

Suddenly, the room filled with brilliant color. It quickly condensed into shapes and forms, becoming a hologram of sorts. I looked around in absolute amazement as images came into view.

Behind us, I recognized the interior of my boat. Giddeon was on the couch next to me, and I was putting the magazine down through Boris. I then saw myself push the magazine onto the floor. I could see we were talking, but heard no sound. There was a flash, and the interior of the room in the future momentarily resembled the radiant tunnel of light.

I looked over at Giddeon, and even he appeared shocked.

__________

One of the creatures opened her eyes. I say her, because I could somehow sense a feminine aura emanating off of her skin. Plus, there was a sweet, familiar smell that I had come to associate with estrogen. The eyes looking at me had enormous pupils surrounded by coronas of blue.

She smiled.

I’m sure she couldn’t see us, but, the hologram changed. She was seeing herself… through
my
eyes. There was such tenderness in the look that I almost felt weak.

In a few moments, the strangest thing happened.

A cat walked through the wall, from our right, and into the room. It was a carbon copy of Samantha. She went to Giddeon, twined through his legs, and then, over to me, where she attempted to rub her face on my jeans.

I reached down and let her smell my hand and run her whiskers through my fingers.

I looked back up and all of the eyes on the semi-supine people were open. The hologram around us had taken on four different perspectives, like slightly offset mirrors. The female that had opened her eyes first, slowly lifted a hand to her lips. I noticed there were only three fingers and a long, elegant thumb.

She winked and blew me a kiss.

__________

With a flash of light, we were back.

“Holy
Toledo
! That was bizarre!” Giddeon exclaimed. “They couldn’t see through my eyes… only yours! When I went there before, they all just laid there, like they were asleep!”

I was somewhat unsteady on my feet, so I sat down next to Boris. He leaned over, smelled my hand, and then tried to rub against it. I ‘scratched’ behind his ears.

“I… I don’t even know what to say. If it wasn’t real, you have the best imagination, ever.”

“I’m good at fabricating things, but not that good. The emotion was almost palpable,” said Gid.

I nodded my head in agreement. “I felt it, too. How in the world did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That they were remote viewing me.”

“Easy… oh, you didn’t see it.”

“See what?”

“The outside of the building,” he said.

“What about it?”

Giddeon smiled.

“It had that portrait of you and Melody on it.”

__________

We tried to go back to that room in the distant future, but, oddly, Giddeon couldn’t access it, again. As a matter of a fact, he couldn’t get past that time and place… almost like he had hit some type of barrier.

I didn’t think much of it; however, it perplexed him, greatly.

__________

Days passed, as they have a tendency to do, and Melody got engaged. They were planning a June wedding, which was only six months away.

Over that past year or so, I had quit going over to her condo because her fiancé was so often there… and, when he wasn’t, there were always pictures of him scattered around different places that constantly reminded me that there were upcoming nuptials. She even had him in his eco-outfit… khaki shorts, T-shirt, a floppy hat and old
Berkshire
sandals… on her screen saver. The picture looked to have been taken somewhere in the
California
desert.

I didn’t love her any less. If anything, I loved her more. After seeing so many permutations of her future, I felt a knife in my heart when I saw them together… knowing that she had at best an even chance of moderate happiness with him.

She was meant to be with me.

I felt it as strongly as I had ever felt anything in my life. And, to make matters worse, my health on the other side had begun to deteriorate. I had had pneumonia twice, and my bone marrow was becoming suppressed. Also, my kidneys and liver were performing not so well. Jeremy came out each time there was a crisis, but I could tell that even he was losing hope. I begged him to not give up on me… that I was fine. That I was coming back.

I’m not really sure I believed it, any longer.

“She has cancer.”

I knew by the expression on his face that he was talking about Melody. At that point, I could practically read his mind, anyway, if I concentrated.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I can smell it. I wasn’t sure, at first, but, now, I’m certain.”

“What kind?” My heart felt like it had stopped beating in my chest.

“Lymphoma… I think. Or, maybe, leukemia. They both have a similar odor. I’ve been to a few hospitals, sniffing out the oncology wards. That’s what I have it narrowed down to. It seems to be getting worse rather quickly. She doesn’t know it, yet… she just thinks she’s tired and stressed about the wedding.”

I began to panic. “We’ve got to help her… we… we’ve got to do something!”

Giddeon was quiet for a few endless seconds. Then, he said, “I’ve been racking my brain… I don’t know if it’ll work, but, I have a plan.”

At that point, any shred of hope was better than none at all.

“Tell me.”

__________

“We’ve got to get some of her DNA over here.”

I shook my head, not following. “How… I mean, how can we do that? And, why? What good will it do?”

“Do you remember when you pulled Boris from the road?”

“Yeah…”

“You shouldn’t have been able to do it. I’ve never been able to physically interact with a conscious, living field even though I’ve got 92.3 % of the brain power.”

Ordinarily, I would have been thrilled to know I was up to 7.7 percent, but, that didn’t really register at the time.

“Plus, you had his blood all over you. Actual living blood. And, it didn’t go away when you shifted out of the alternate time line. You had to take a shower, remember?”

I nodded.

“Somehow, when you’re in a really emotional state, you bridge the gap. I think you did it before, with her.”

“When?” I asked.

“When you two were on the couch that day… the first time you went over to her place, alone.”

I thought back. “When I tasted her tears?”

“Yes. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but, the more I do, the more I realize how odd that was. We have to go back to that afternoon and collect some DNA… hopefully, there’ll be enough from epithelial cells sloughed off in the fluid.”

“Why… I mean, what will we do with her DNA?”

“Sequence it… at least the parts that matter.”

I was attentive, trying to figure out where he was going. “What parts?”

“Her MHC molecules.”

“MHC… what’re those?”

“Major Histo-compatability Complexes. They’re two different types of proteins, one of which is expressed on the surfaces of most cells. A lot of alternate sub-type combinations can exist, and those differences are why it’s so difficult for one person to donate tissue to another person… if they don’t match, the recipient’s immune system just destroys the donated organ. Anti-rejection drugs keep that from happening, but they bring on a whole host of other problems. The odds of a perfect match are astronomical, by the way.”

“Okay… so how is that gonna help her?”

He blew air out of his lungs, as if uncertain what he was about to say would actually work. “We’re gonna change your MHC’s to match hers. You’ll be a perfect bone marrow donor.”

I looked at him, hoping he knew of a way for us to accomplish that. However, even if we did, there was still a major hurdle. He obviously knew what it was without me asking.