Anthology Complex (8 page)

Max Harper stops the vehicle and he points towards my window. I look in
the direction that he is pointing and I see this sort of glorified mailbox, I
have no idea what it is. Max Harper tells me to roll down my window and throw a
grenade inside of it, so that the enemy can't use it anymore. I grab one of my
grenades but I fumble with it and then it gets unclipped. The grenade is live.

It falls down to my feet, but I quickly recover it. Now I'm trying to
roll my window down, but the damn thing is stuck. I try harder, but the time is
ticking away. I start banging on the glass, but it won't break. This entire
time Max Harper is also trying to roll his window down as well, but he is just
as unlucky as I am.

Max Harper then grabs the grenade out of my hand, pulls up the metal
window slider and tosses the grenade into the back and effectively kills all of
the other soldiers to save our own lives.

In another variation, it is Max who fumbles with his grenade and I am
the one who tosses it in the back and kills every one. In another, after one of
us throws the grenade in the back, we don't realize we've killed anyone until
after we get out of the vehicle and open the back to find ourselves looking at
dead bodies.

There are also versions of the dream where there are no grenade
explosions. In one variation we are driving along and we come to a traffic
light that has no business being out there. As we approach it, we realize the
traffic light is yellow, and it never changes. After a while, Max Harper, or
whoever is driving in that variation of the dream, he starts to tell me that we
can't fool ourselves.

Each one of these variations always start out exactly the same, the
other soldiers and I are walking alongside that dirt path, and then the dream
unfolds into whatever it is going to unfold into. It's almost as if there is a
start point and the end point is determined by the choices the soldiers and I
make. Should we get in the vehicle? Should we continue to walk down this path?

The start point can almost be compared to the beginning of the universe,
if we agree that the universe actually has a start point, a beginning, and then
all these things happen, and all of these decisions and actions are made, and
this will become the story of the universe. However, in a parallel universe
that starts out exactly the same way as the first universe, one simple decision
or action may be altered, and because of this different action and different
decision is made, this parallel story becomes the tale of this parallel
universe.

The location is always the universe as we know it, but like these dreams
I keep having, no variation is ever the same. The universe has so many stories
to tell.

The one thing that keeps coming back to me with this idea, this concept,
is this "theory" that as decisions and actions and the likewise are
made and as time progresses, the less of a chance a nonspecific event has of
occurring.

In this explanation, the number of the point is the moment in time, and
the letter or letters of the point is the variation of what happened at that
certain moment in time. The amount of characters for numbers and the amount of
characters for letters are always identical. Point 1a is the birth of one of
your ancestors from over three thousand years ago. Point 10gv is the birth of
one of your ancestors from one thousand years ago, made possible because of
point 1a occurring. Point 100nkd is your birth, made possible because of point
10gv and point 1a occurring.

As the number of points gradually increase in the same direction as
time, or due to decisions and actions, the number of possible occurrences
increases, and therefore the chances of each point becoming a reality
decreases. Getting from point 1a to point 10gv is not likely, and getting from
point 10gv to point 100nkd is even more unlikely. Consequences may instead land
on 100rfd or the other many possibilities.

Some people say the universe has been in existence for billions of
years. Can you imagine how close you came to never being born? How close you
and I came to never having this one sided discourse.

We've gotten to a time where the number-letter sequence is so high and
so diverse that every thing that happens now, in comparison to the time of the
beginning of the universe, is unlikely to happen, and because of this, some
occurrences are credited to fate; this idea that this specific event was
destined to occur.

Chapter 17:

PAGE 1 OF 8, "THE EIGHT DREAMS"

Third year, January 5th, I had this dream. I had died a long time ago,
but it wasn't the type of death where afterwards people would attend your
funeral or your wake; it was a spiritual death. I lost all of my hopes but also
lost all of my fears. Your beliefs, dreams, goals, they don't matter to you
anymore because you realize there is a possibility that your existence may
serve no purpose.

What killed me was a note I had received, telling me that at some point
in my life I would have to question my existence. Question my purpose, my
function. That I would have to accept the answer, the truth that I find,
because fooling myself would be pointless. This note stayed in the back of my
mind, growing silently like a plant. This note that someone left in place of my
wallet.

Sometime later in the dream I am on the subway, and this man tells me
that he gave me that note. That he picked my pocket. He bumps into me, takes my
wallet, leaves the note there in its place, and now he is trying to give me
back my wallet.

A normal person might be angry, but by this time that seed that this man
planted in the back of mind has grown fully and is flourishing, and instead I
ask him why he did it.

He tells me that besides needing money for food, he did it because he
wanted me to think about my life even if it was only for a second. He asks me
how I think someone would feel if one day they are leaving their house, and in
their mailbox they find a mysterious note like the one I found in my coat
pocket. How would someone react to that? Then I ask him if he has been doing
this to other people, and he says yes, he says he's been doing it for a long
time.

He tells me that people get notes every day, it's just that some are
more obvious than others. When you're about to go to sleep laying down on that
bed thinking about things, when you're driving down that long stretch of road
thinking about things, when you're walking through that bad neighborhood thinking
about things, all these moments are opportunities to better yourself.

Regardless of how good of a person you may be now, or how bad, there is
always room for improvement. Then he tells me that the improvement he's talking
about isn't necessarily what you get from giving to the poor or becoming a
better parent, the improvement he's talking about is the one you get from
suffering, from misery and struggle. From finding light in the darkest corner.

Now my stop comes up, but I want to hear more of what this man has to
say, so I stay. I ask this man if he believes in God, and he says he believes
in a higher being but not a personal God. He tells me that he doesn't believe
in a God that intervenes with our daily lives and happenings.

He tells me he believes that someone made all that we can comprehend,
that someone must have put it all in motion because you can't make something
from nothing, and then this being either moved on to other things or decided
not to incorporate itself into its creation.

Then he asks me if I believe there is a meaning to life. A purpose to
our existence. I tell him that I had been thinking about it ever since I got
his note, and that I came to the conclusion that in order for something to have
a purpose, it has to have a reason for conception, or a beginning, and a goal,
or an ending. Sort of like how most people go to college to receive some kind
of document so they can have the chance to work in a specific field or have a
certain job.

Your beginning is applying for the college with the intent of receiving
some form of education, and your ending is graduating knowing and understanding
most of the knowledge you needed, and now your goal or the purpose for that
idea being conceived has been fulfilled. I tell this man that if the universe
has a beginning, then it must have an end, and therefore there is a good chance
that there is a reason why we are here.

Then I tell him that if the universe however does not have a beginning,
then it has no end, and every thing that we do is meaningless. There is no
goal. He looks at me and he says that our lives have a beginning and an end. I
suppose we shouldn't be looking for the answers to why this universe is here as
a whole as opposed to why we are all here individually.

There is a brief pause, and then this man tells me his name is Roach.
The last thing he tells me before I wake up is that we either die accomplishing
every thing or we die accomplishing nothing.

Today, those words make my think of Mary, about how she is trying to
accomplish so much and give meaning and purpose to her busy life, but in the
end when her time has come, if she doesn't feel that she led a fulfilled life,
then just that one second of regret can make her feel as if she she didn't
accomplish anything. If however in her final days she feels that she did the
best she could, perhaps she will be at ease with herself and find solace. For
that brief moment in time, she will feel as if she has accomplished everything.

There was a time when I tried to tell Maria about this dream, but she
didn't believe me because I was so descriptive as if my memory was at some kind
of inhuman level. The truth is my memory isn't really at an advanced level.
When I was with her I was consumed with the dreams I had, so I spent days and
nights thinking about them, studying them, and eventually it became so
important to me that my mind wanted to start remembering every piece of the
dream so that I could later dissect it.

After she left, when I started to take them more seriously, that's when
my memory really got an upgrade. Teachers always tell you that you are more
likely to remember something if you write it down and say it out loud. After
writing and thinking about my dreams so much, I became more aware of how they
worked. Their patterns and what they were about. There are people around the
world who have this condition where they remember every single second of their
life for as long as they live, or something to that extent.

Sometimes I wonder if that applies to their dreams as well, and sometimes
I wonder how close I am to getting to that level. It has also been said that
every person subconsciously remembers every single thing that happens in their
lives, but the problem is sometimes we just can't access that memory.

That's probably why every once in a while a dream seems like a faded
memory when I try to think about it, that's probably why I can't remember
certain elements of the dream.

A little girl is walking down a school hallway and next to a locker she
sees a book on the ground titled "Hypnosis." According to the idea
previously mentioned, this memory will stay with her for the rest of her life,
somewhere inside her brain I guess, but she won't necessarily remember it.

With my dreams, I've gone through so much memory therapy that I've
learned how to remember these experiences that I have.

When I was younger I started to recognize that the dreams I had were
sometimes connected with another dream I would have, so I asked a doctor if
such a thing was normal. Do people usually have dreams that seem as if they are
trying to tell a story? He tells me that he doesn't know, that it's not his
field of expertise, but he also says that he wouldn't doubt that it could
happen. Then he goes on to ask me what my name is and if I feel depressed.

Chapter 18:

OEDIPUS ELECTRA

I'm walking home from the grocery store and down Chase street I see a
crowd. Naturally my mind begins to wonder what may have happened, and as the
average human thinker would behave, I assume something bad happened.