Blood On The Broken Fourth Wall: Part I (or, The Beast Of His Nature)
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and every cause has its effect...It's perfectly natural, and infinitely unavoidable.
It's a very common view that the Universe is a crazy place, but why is that? It can be argued that the Universe is a crazy place because everyone in it is crazy, and anyone who thinks they're sane has simply got to be out of their delusional effin' mind.
It can also be argued that the Universe is a crazy place because even if given enough time, everything in it can eventually be explained, but unfortunately, not everything in it can ever be understood.
It's just the nature of the Beast.
When any action is taken: big, small, mighty or mundane, the reaction ripples across the Universe, carried by time...much like dropping a pebble in water. The ripple travels outward; infinitely in all directions with a sound so low on the register that it's felt deep in your core more than it's heard, & it careens across the Universe beyond the limit of imagination & the scope of thought.
Hello...Welcome to Edinburgh.
My name is Kevin, and I'm the subconscious of a man named Damien McEwan.
At the moment, he's asleep and dreaming, so, if you're game for it, you have the opportunity to take a tour of his mind with me as your guide if you like.
However, I need you to understand that the Universe is ultimately a crazy place because the resulting ripples of every action taken and made by every living thing...Human, plant, animal and alien, crash against one another with the subtle rumble of a tsunami, that forces open the door to a path that begins here, and I'm going to need you to choose to walk through it with me of your own free will.
With a frustrated grimace of concentration, Damien finally looks up and asks the dead man seated across the table, "Do you have any nines?"
"Go fish" replied the rotting corpse.
He draws three cards from the deck that read one by one, You-are-dreaming, but takes no notice as he adds them to the others in his hand. "OK then." continued Dimi, "Do you have any sixes?"
"Yes" the cadaver answered with a sly smile and a glint in the eye that reflect a creepy green light. "I have two." and places the pair on the table, exposing the words: Wake-up.
Still taking no notice of the messages his subconscious is giving him, Damien makes eye contact with the bartender, signaling that he's ready for a fresh pint, and the barkeep sends a Plague Dog named Marburg to the table where he and his handler continue playing their card game.
As Collin Murphy takes his turn & draws a number of cards from the deck, Dimi casually places his glass on the floor as the large Rottweiler arrives, hikes its leg, and urinates black vomit up to the brim.
Just to be clear, the black vomit isn't really black, but a bright, and runny arterial red with tarlike black speckles that look like coffee grounds. Each of the tarry granules is concentrated virus particles and will scare any schooled virologist lacking a hazmat suit.
After accepting a generous tip from Dimi, the dog pauses for a moment & barks as Dimi upends the pint of the tarry, bloody brew...Impatiently, the dog barks louder.
"What is it Boy?"
"I said," replied the canine, "it's starting to get late...we really should wake up now."
"Just ignore the puppy and concentrate on the game." said Colin. "Now, do you have any regrets?"
Damien peers over his hand with a remorseful look in his eyes that reflect a creepy green light and admits, "Yeah. I have two." and exposes all his cards on the table...
Location: The Temporal Cortex
(Subconscious observance of episodic memory in the 3rd Person)
Time: 7:30am, October 30th, 813 A.S.
Hannah deactivates the alarm, allows herself a deep stretch, nudges Dimi on the shoulder and says, "Wake up." just prior to crawling herself out of bed.
Damien sleeps like the dead, so the only response she gets from him is an unconscious mumble of "Do you have any nines?" as he turns to his side away from her. She rolls her eyes and says with a smirk, "You-are-dreaming" and then goes off to the other room to make coffee before getting dressed.
She returns a few minutes later with a full cup and kneels down on his side of the bed, close to his face and says, "It's starting to get late...we really should wake up now." as she allows him to breathe the wafting steam and aroma of the beverage. This time, all she gets from him is another unconscious mumble of, "Do you have any sixes?"
Somewhat irritated, she looks at the time, places the coffee on the nightstand, pulls off the sheets, straddles on top of him, leans in close to his ear and whispers seductively: "Wake up, Baby...If you make us late, you're going to regret it."
The moisture and heat of her soft breath sends a shiver up his spine as he groggily awakes, blurting out, "Yeah, I have two!"
Opening his eyes, he finds Hannah smiling above him, her long chestnut hair framing his face.
"Two of what?" she moans with a deep inhale as she closes her eyes and brings down her hips to utterly connect with his.
...at this point, Dimi doesn't even remember...Nor does he care. It was just some silly dream anyway.
I think its probably best to leave them here and allow them their privacy for now. I trust you can use your imaginations to fill in the blanks for yourselves.
...I will at least say this: He definitely made them both late to work that morning & to this day, I promise you, he doesn't regret it for a second.
Location: The Temporal Cortex
(Autobiographical memory of the Gaian Guard Trial- Day 2)
Time: Daybreak. Planet Gaia, January 9, 800 A.S.
Damien wants to vomit, but can't.
If he does, he fails his trial and washes out of The Gaian Guard; barred from re-enlistment for three years.
Puking is simply not an option.
Its taken three years with a black mark on his record so far for Damien to get to the point he's at now: Rolling back and forth in the cold mud with the other few recruits for the past couple of hours straight.
He's dizzy, suffering a fair bit of vertigo and excruciatingly numb from pain and exhaustion.
A shadow looms over him, shouting "On your feet you worthless piece of Islay ****!"
"NOW! DO IT NOW!!"
He rose past the pain, getting to his feet on reflex, as if a puppet on strings...He'd congratulate himself for keeping his balance & remaining upright if it wasn't for the sharp and sudden punch in the gut from the ranking Guardsman.
Dimi buckles to his knees as the contents of his stomach lurch up his throat; filling his mouth. Warm acidic bile thick with partially digested chunks of breakfast strain against the back of his mouth like a dam ready to burst.
He can feel the acid beginning to work away at the enamel of his teeth and imagines the sweet relief of his jaw giving out and splintering through his gums at the hinges, forcing his mouth to collapse and go slack, releasing a goulash of blood and sick onto the cold, wet ground.
He Rises to his feet a second time, embarrassed and furious...He swallows, tasting the rancid vomit as it slowly slides back down into his stomach where it started.
With barely enough spare time to take a breath and spit, upon orders, Damien and the other remaining recruits strap on their personal gear & immediately begin a 10K run around the Guard camp perimeter as the dawn breaks.
Location: The Temporal Cortex
(Autobiographical memory of the Gaian Guard Trial- Day 2)
Time: An hour later
Dimi is beginning to achieve a meditative state. His senses are heightening.
Right now, he can feel every single ounce of pain as if they were tons.
His lungs have a mind to burst out of their ribcage so that they might get a little more air. His feet are ready to shatter like clay. His legs, heavy with fatigue and lactic acid, are preparing themselves for the possibility of collapse.
At this particular moment, The Gaian is experiencing some of the worst that life has to offer and he would prefer to die.
However, also at this particular moment, about 25 laps into his 10K run, his mind is compartmentalizing the pain and aligning itself into a natural balance with his body.
Dimi has never experienced anything like this before.
It's hard to explain.
Once his mind and body align, the pain no longer matters. The pain is still very much there and not dulled in any way whatsoever, its just that when the mind and body reach a balance, the mind can efficiently trick the body into using its energy to push the pain further to the back of the cranium so that it can be properly ignored, allowing the mind the freedom to disassociate & wander freely.
It was then that Dimi truly heard his tone for the very first time.
Some Gaians believe that every living thing has a tone. Not really an audible sound...but more like feeling the background hum created from the vibrations made by every fiber of our being.
Have you ever stood in an empty room & chanted "Ohm" until you found its specific acoustical pitch?
The soundwaves of the wrong pitch will bounce off the walls and sound wobbly, like a note out of tune, but once you match the natural acoustics of the room, the wobble smooths out.
It was inside that moment that you were in perfect harmony with the environment around you.
If you know what I'm talking about...you've felt it before from your throat to your bones. It was as if the soundwaves stopped bouncing off of you & began traveling through you instead...strumming a cord inside you that felt like entering the eye of a storm
& that 'cord' you felt?...That was your tone.
Damien is just now beginning to experience total tonal harmony between his mind, body, (and he now believes,) Gaia itself.
...& the experience is fundamentally changing his understanding of what he thought life really was.
Location: The Temporal Cortex
(Autobiographical memory of the Gaian Guard Trial- Day 8)
Time: Dawn. January 15th, 800 A.S.
As the light of the first Edinburgh sun peaks over the horizon, the Gaian Guard encampment is already mostly broken down. In another five minutes, it will be as if the Gaians were never there for the past week at all. In about ten minutes, Damien will surrender his gear to the ranking Guardsmen, hooded, and then transported by air, deep into the Gaian wilderness to be abandoned.
He will be allowed the clothes on his back, and a blade. That's it. At that point, alone, he will have twenty-four days to find his way to his designated extraction point.
Those that survive are granted the full rank of Gaian Guard and all the rights, burdens, and privileges that entails.
Those that don't, are simply left to rot as nature intended.
That's just the way it's done...Ladies & Gentlemen, welcome to the Planet Gaia.