guess title from prose - III

I wake up.

Rolling to hit the alarm clock, I belated notice something not-quite-right about it. I rub my eyes, and look again - no. No, it is certainly not my clock, and certainly not my bed. I think back: did I end up going to that lakeside on campus I so wanted to go to last night? Am I suffering from alcohol-induced amnesia? Hmm... I inspect myself and my surroundings. Nah, I'm fine, or at least, I think everything is fine. You know, come to think about it, this looks like one of the homes my friends have house-sited before. Not really giving it a second thought, cobwebs of sleep still clinging thick to my brain, I go downstairs.

... I don't remember much of what happened that day, at least not with any clarity. I do, however, remember that what I can recall, there was something definitely not-quite-right about it all. The house was large - tall, rather, three floors - and quite nice. They had a basement - I always wanted a basement! There was something about being able to go downstairs, and just enter your own little world and hang out... Anyways, so they had a basement, and a nice patio going outside to a small yard with green lawns and pretty shrubs and flowers. Their living room had dark leather furniture and was set in a small shallow, with two steps leading down from the hall and kitchen. A long partition separated the living room from the hallway, and a bar opened to the kitchen from which one could overlook the room. And there were stairs there. A stair case, with a metal banister that descended into the basement.

All the stairs spiraled. I only ever remember going down them...

I think we got drunk, my friends and I. I don't recall all their faces, but we must've gotten drunk - someone, someone, was making fancy drinks, and god knows they're tasty. I swear I didn't know all of them, yet there was that feeling that I knew them, or should know them, and I wasn't thinking clearly at the time, so it was hardly more than a side note.

I remember food - there is a black barbecue sitting outside, and it is open, and skewers of vegetables and patties of meat are giving off curls of Grey smoke. I also remember water. There are sounds coming from the kitchen: someone - a girl - splashes another playfully with water from the sink. Pretending to be appalled, the guy runs to the nearby patio and fetches - oh my god - the hose. He lugs the hose into the doorway, releasing a stream of water right on target. She shrieks, and before I know it, everyone has some sort of weapon of mass watery destruction - it seems there is a small stockpile of water guns outside left over from summer. Well, it's not my living room, and it's not my house-sitting house, and heck, I don't even know the people, but hey, it was a bandwagon and so, not thinking, I jump aboard, grabbing one of those big double-tanked pump-powered water rifles and start pumping away.

If you've ever played laser tag with me, you might know I'm... not-so-hot at it, so I retreat from the living room and duck behind the wall. Not being the most observant puppy in the world, I get a nice squirt in the back from one of my friends, who had also gotten the same idea and ducked behind the wall. I recognize this guy's face and promptly fill it with water in a well-aimed (Wow! That's amazing for me!) shot. He splutters and looks annoyed, and while he's trying to wipe the water from his glasses, I run for the kitchen and crouch in the corner by the cupboards (they were wood, I remember - orangish red wood, and the grain was vertical). Filled with alcohol, no doubt, and adrenaline, I suppress a pleased giggle and think myself quite clever. I pop my head out from behind the bar, hoping to find some unsuspecting targets to snipe, but it seems my little encounter behind the wall and my brief pause in the kitchen was time enough for my friends to largely disappear down into the basement.

Hey, no, wait! Wait for me!

I call to them, and run down into the living room - I have a bad habit of getting left behind (or is it leaving myself behind?) and I don't want it to happen this time, not when something so outrageously insane is happening. I leap down the stairs, and find myself in darkness - isn't there a light someplace? I stumble a little and land in a crouch, more or less; thankfully, the carpet was soft. Where is everyone? Oh god, I think, are they all going to jump me when I turn the corner and get to the bottom? I clumsily grope my way down the stairs, spiraling in a tight squarish sort of way. It is very dark, and I can't see much more than ghostly outlines. I reach the bottom, and cannot see much of anything. However, what I can see makes me think: I'm sure it didn't look like this before... Was there a before? I can't remember...

Well, it didn't seem to matter much at the time, but as I walked down a short hallway, lit very pale with a distant and diffuse light, I am suddenly reminded of something: with a snort and chuckle, I wonder if there will be a bright light at the end of the tunnel. But a lot of humor was lost when, reaching the end, I find myself at a wall. Cluttered. Junk. Junk in abundance. It is all stacked or shoved in a tall array of shelves and metal framework - odd. And no one is here. No one is here! It feels sort of like standing in a closet - in fact, it feels so much like I was standing in a closet that I take a look behind me, just to make sure some sort of weird door hadn't close shut on me, but all I see is the grey shroud of the hallway receding into darkness. Feeling a little frightened and more than concerned, I call to my friends again.

Where is everyone? Where have you gone? Where are you?

Please, wait for me!

I hear voices - soft, distant, somewhere above me... I look up. Above, where the ceiling should have been, the stack of junk against the wall rises higher than I can see. I should have been able to see someone, but there is no one. Am I blind? They call down to me.

Come on!

Their voices are excited, as if they had discovered some sort of wonder at the top. I look around, and find that the discarded pieces of furniture, old boxes, and metal frames of bicycles had been arranged in something that looks possibly climbable. I feel dismay, for I am not as fast or as strong as the others. Why do they always do this?

Please, wait for me!

I mount the clutter, hoping it will not all fall back on me, but the framework seems sturdy. It holds. I climb, finding my way up, clinging to the metal frames that seemed to be supporting everything. The voices come to me again. They are excited, and filled with awe and thrill. What am I missing out on? What will I find? Tell me! But I cannot hear their words, and I feel that, even if they could hear me, they would not listen, for whatever they found was far more interesting.

I climb faster, and see passing shadows above me. Hey! I am just below you - I can see you! Wait! I look over, and through cracks in the wall, I see a bright room. Light filters through in ribbons into my comparatively dark shaft I was ascending, and I see their feet passing by, and the golden paws of a dog I know I know (what was she doing here?). I struggle to reach the top, and surge upwards in the desire to know and share in that knowledge - in the fear of being left behind.

Suddenly, the shaft opens as if into broad daylight, but it was not natural light. There are rooms, enormous rooms, impossibly large for the house, in fact, and these rooms had not been here before. I know now that where I stand is impossible, but the fact does not entirely sink in, so strange are my surroundings.

Rows of monitors. Screens. Dozens and dozens of them, all around the edges, and filling the center in neat rows. I look behind me, past the shaft that opened ridiculously in the middle of the floor, and see that the room extended into many other rooms, all with screens. Hundreds of screens.

The screens are flashing things, showing streams of images. Some of them look real, and others do not, but many of them seem familiar. Had I seen these images before? There are many people hunched over the screens, watching, or busy at work. I am reminded of a great art studio, greater and larger and vaster than any I had seen on television or in real life before. Maybe it is more like a film production room or something. A control room. I don't know.

The fluorescent lights buzz softly. The light from their many rows, and from the monitors, make my eyes hurt. Too bright.

I walk over to one of the artists (that is how I think of them now - artists orchestrating something, creating it, guiding its evolution) and ask what is going on. What are these monitors? He swivels in his chair and looks at me with a friendly smile.

Here, I may see what I wish to see - a portal to my mind, but not just my own, but others, too. Anything and everything exists, and here they are all connected. I look at the nearest monitor, and I see figures there - I'm not sure if I recognize them. A stranger, whose life I shall never know, or perhaps it is my own self I am seeing, but simply through different eyes.

I wake up then. Blinding light, and the high-pitched sound of a monitor screaming.

Looking around, I know that the world around me is not the one I was just in, and not the one I was so sure I knew. I have this feeling of absolute certainty that I had just been dead, and had just risen awake and alive in a world infinitely more realistic than the one I had just left.

I realize belatedly that familiar faces smile at me, and a small boy, fair faced, with blue eyes and scruffy brown hair, is jumping up and down and calling excitedly at me. Not knowing who the boy is, but finding him strangely familiar and smiling at his exuberance, I sit up (I hadn't realized I was lying down) and look around. I had been lying in a glass creche, padded with soft cushions - there were displays and picture glittering in the opened cover of it, like designs that had been sandblasted into it, except these move. I feel as if I had entered some sort of science fiction movie - around me was a vast environment, and there were thousands of other glass couches just like mine, all in a vast ring. Many were empty. I could see that the ceiling, impossibly high and domed and perfectly smooth, was glass. Beyond I could see blue sky, a wonderful pale blue, and thin wisps of white cirrocumulus.

The boy tugs at my sleeve for my attention again (I think I am dressed in all white - the fabric is very soft, and almost seems to shine in the brightness of this world), and pulls me up and away. Leading me by the hand, we leave the ring of creches and I find myself running through a great beach of bright sand. That wonderful fine sand that you can feel soft and warm between your bare toes, that beckons you to sit and play in it, or to lie back and feel its warmth. I can see that blue waves - bluer than any water you see elsewhere, save for the most beautiful of beaches - gently washing up on the sand. There are many people - children, and adults dressed like myself - playing in the surf, but we do not join them. Holding my hand, the boy laughs and smiles and takes me further, and we leave the beach behind. Suddenly I notice that the sand beneath my feet has disappeared, and is replaced with the cool feather-touch of grass. Very green - the colours there are brilliant and bright and very pure, everywhere. I lower my other hand and run my hand through the tussocks that spring up in places, just to feel them and know that they are real. I can smell them, the grassy fields, but something richer and more exotic is in their scent. The boy stops, and points into the distance.

There are dinosaurs. Great saurian creatures with pebbled skin that rippled as they walk beneath towering trees with layered canopies. Other wonderful beasts, long-tailed birds with purple markings, and predators with thick manes and a long wolfish snout, snuggle toothed, with two distinct pairs of ornamental bone erupting from its sleek sides - I know it does not exist in any history book, yet I know its sight with absolute certainty.

Then I look closer, and see forms running through the grass. Bipedal saurian creatures, with powerful legs and a long tail to balance. They bear crests of spines and some, the males, have a pair of horns that curved to frame their long tapered snout. One, a large male, breaks off from the rest and approached - it bears great claws on it feet and has great grasping paws with long fingers, but I am not afraid, for I know this one. He stops before me, and snorts softly, bobbing. I reach out and stroke him - his warm, pebbled skin is black with bold red/magenta markings, as I remembered, but I find he also has a dark golden cream underside that merged with the black in tiger-stripe streaks, and he is more beautiful than I had imagined before. Even now, I cannot think that I should ever faithfully replicate what I saw. A sudden giggle escapes - I am seeing something, and touching it, and I knowing that it is real.

Can you see it all? You know this place, your mind's place - what do you see?

I look to the boy that had brought me, but instead I find a young man I know very well, and suddenly realize that he had been the artist I had spoken to earlier. I look, and see another, and another, and an older man with bright eyes - I know them.

I know I know them.

I wake up.

I wake up, and I wonder if I have only just entered another dream, another reality as convincingly real as the last, but find myself disappointed... but I wonder. What is more real: this place I inhabit now, and live in day to day, or the other places I see, the people I know and love and yet have never truly met? What lies beyond the glass, the mirror of our eyes, in some secret room or world beyond worlds, that we simply cannot see yet, or can catch only glimpses of when we are asleep but more aware than we may ever be in waking life? What is there, calling with distant voices, always moving and driving us forward into that which we do not know?

Please, wait for me!



PS : I read script of 'waking life' again. here is the link

http://waking-life.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_archive.html#108144911522499691