The Oneironaut

Gamma-Wave Gambits and Black-Cat-Hands

Meanwhile:

Abe flips the switch on the recorder and starts:

"Heard the transmission on the radio, coordinates make no sense. But I'm an Oneironaut, and making sense of things that don't, well that's my job.

I figure I've got enough juice to take the next Theta-wave out as far as the Perennial.

That's where the gamble is, the switch-over to Gamma. Theta frequency's too low. What I need is a tsunami, something over 140hz. A Gamma blast to get me out of Dreamtime, back to solid ground.

Although, like I said, it's a gamble. Thrusters are jacked as is, and fate dealt me a black-cat-hand. Luckily, I'm a gambling man."

The last pre-launch prep switch clicks satisfyingly into place. Abe sits back, takes it all in. The lights, the sounds, he felt hopeful, brash even.

"Okay Abe, this is it, cards are on the table. Let's read 'em and hope we don't weep."

He looks at the worn piece of paper stuck to the console in front of him, a sepia toned dream stared back at him, all lush long hair, and wild abandon.

“Get a six-pack out the fridge, would ya, darlin’?” He whispers into the breath fogging up the inside of his helmet. “I'm on my way.”

Abraham Cussler reaches for the ignition switch with a heavy-gloved hand. He was thankful for those gloves, made it so he couldn't see his hands trembling.

He grips the thick red ignition switch between his thumb and the crook of his index, faces forward and flips it.

Sophic release-flanges fan out on the back of the Dreamcatch, and shoots of Cognitive Dissonance set green fire to the space that contained it. St. Elmo’s turbo-boosters they called it in the basement manufactorum of DeepLab—FIGMA.

He felt the metaphysic barrier break like china on his face. This is the part he hates.

He saw a billion neurons, burning like stars in the black of the Grey-matter, he saw a billion versions of himself, he saw a dying turtle on a beach, he saw a naked old man committing to something, a comedy act? Suicide?

It didn't matter, he was all of it. All at once.

The teenagers behind him were making fun of him because he's fat. The corporal had no reason to doubt his word. The jet black jaguar will pass, if he can only stop his erratic breathing. His babies will be okay, his babies will be okay, his babies —

The Oneironaut focuses. Hears the bell chime. That's it, he thinks. Breathe in. Breathe out. You are me. You are Abe. Your favourite dinosaur is a Parasaurolophus.

There, bliss. Like a painkiller finally kicking in. Mindfulness. It was the final lesson he learned in his time there as a marine in the US Army. The hardest one to learn, in fact. But he learned it, uncle Sam had deep pockets in the sixties, and it was having fun with its ability to get kids like him doing all kinds of things, so only the best Theravada bodhisattva would do. Master Pri, now there’s a man in tune… with everything.

Some of the lab coats were drawing pentacles in chalk on their laboratory floors. Others were dosing young recruits with acid, enough to drown in. And in some pockets of that underground lab he was stationed in, some were bending phenological reality. And that was the lab that Abe walked into in ‘68.

He never walked out again.

But he was a soldier, in his own way, and proud to serve. Until, this. Sol-dial on his wrist recalibrated time outside the linear zone. Made the senselessness of no-time make… an almost kind of sense. It estimated that in normal, human years, he’s been stuck here for seventy-nine. Though he still didn’t look a day older than twenty-eight. Uncle Sam gave him that at least.

He smiles.

The tumult ceases, turns to background noise. Abe opens his eyes and—

…

They are the eyes of another. A man, about his age, or what his age ought to be. He was wearing a button down over dark pants, and thick-framed glasses. A car was parked near, headlights on to light the gloom. The car, black, some kind of jalopy, had people in the backseat, and a young woman opened the passenger side door.

“You okay?” She asks, and lights a cigarette.

Abe, with an unfamiliar tongue, spoke up. “Yeah, I’m… I’m fine.”.

She just stares at him. He turns around and sees it for the first time. A gas station, or used to be. Eerie. A nearby sign blinked fluorescent letters spelling;

Abaddon Gas.

Welcome Home.

Abe wanted to break. He wanted to go insane. He looked at his hands, or whoever’s hands they were, at least these weren’t trembling. Abe wanted to scream, he wanted to say… a lot of things. But he could say only one.

“Fuck.”

To be continued…