Coronado Dreaming

  It was a way to save the one I loved.

  __________

  When we were back I could see Giddeon’s eyes shining with delight.

  “How cool was that?” he asked.

  “Unbelievable!”

  “Did you get it? Did you see the differences?”

  “Yes. It’s hard to believe that it all works that way.”

  “I know… it is, isn’t it?” he replied.

  We left the lecture room and walked down the hall to a lab. Giddeon sat me down.

  “We’ll start with the easy one. I want you to concentrate on your ‘A’ antigens. Think of the coding regions and try to make them into ‘B’ configurations. You know the way you’ve kind of got the hang of making pizza and beer appear? It’s basically the same. Except you’re changing things on the inside.”

  “I think this is a little more complicated than pizza and beer.”

  Giddeon smiled. “I have faith in you.”

  He lowered the lights, setting the mood in the room for magic, I supposed.

  __________

  I closed my eyes and concentrated, thinking about the regions I had seen. My breathing slowed; I saw the all of the ‘incorrect’ molecules in the stretches of my DNA and tried to interchange them with her ‘correct’ sequences. As I relaxed, I could feel something happening, but I wasn’t sure of exactly what it was. After a few minutes, Giddeon drew some blood and quickly set the tube on ice.

  “I’m gonna run this, and then go have a look for myself to verify any changes.”

  He quickly set up a PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and popped it into a machine. It took an hour and a half to run, and then, another couple of hours to sequence. We went and had some Bronx Pizza while we waited on the sequencing, which, while we were gone, was being done by the fastest state of the art machine in existence… it hadn’t even been patented, yet. Giddeon took that opportunity to go through more lecture material. By time we were done, I almost felt like I had a Ph.D.

  We flashed back into the lab and Giddeon read part of the results. He grunted, and then disappeared into the tube of blood. Within seconds, he was back.

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  “Give me the bad news, first.”

  “You still have type ‘A’ blood.”

  “What’s the good news?”

  Giddeon picked up the report and looked at the other page. He grunted, again, and smiled.

  “Actually, two pieces of good news. First, you induced several mutations in the region, some of them correct. Secondly, the sequencing totally corresponds to what I saw. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t just see what it was I wanted to see, so I only read half of the results before I went to check for myself. The second half is exactly spot on with my observations, too.”

  “Okay, so what do we do, now?”

  “We try again. Only this time we don’t have to kill time waiting for the machine to run.”

  “Couldn’t we have just gone into the future and read the results?”

  He grinned. “Yep, we could have… but, I don’t always trust the future… too many of them.”

  He dimmed the lights, again, and ‘showed’ me the sequence we were shooting for by somehow projecting it into my head.

  I sat on the floor in a Buddha-type pose, and again closed my eyes. I don’t know why I did that…

  It just felt right.

  Chapter 65

  I can’t tell you how many times I got stuck with a needle over the next two days. Actually, they were just pin pricks, but still there was the little flinch associated with it. Nothing like being burned alive in a nuclear holocaust, mind you, but nevertheless, a little unpleasant.

  Finally, we got it right.

  I was ‘B’ negative… at least on that side of reality. My blood stayed the same in the rehabilitation facility. Giddeon held my hand up to my face.

  “Smell that.”

  I inhaled. I did notice a slight difference, almost like cinnamon and clover. “Nice,” I said.

  “Hopefully, that’ll carry over with you when you get back. Now, all we have to do is change 6 MHC molecules… the ones that don’t match.”

  I hung my head. I couldn’t imagine how many more attempts that would take.

  Giddeon patted me on the shoulder. “Not tonight, though. You need some rest. We’ll go have a burger on the deck at The Del and watch the sunset. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “I think I’d rather get my tools and start on that.”

  He laughed, and the two of us jumped over to Coronado.

  __________

  We were seated at a low table there on the deck overlooking the Pacific. Two huge cheeseburgers, along with Cokes and fries, appeared before us.

  He and I ate in silence, watching the sun as it slowly made its way into the blue-grey ocean.

  When the last remnant of it dipped below the horizon, the most beautiful, brilliant green flash colored the horizon… it even reflected off of the small clouds high above us. It was indescribable. I had heard about it, but never experienced it.

  “The green flash!” exclaimed Giddeon. “Cool. You know… I’ve heard you have to be in love to see it?”

  I thought back over the past four years, and, finally, said,

  “Yes… that’s what they say.”

  Chapter 66

  The next 10 days were brutal. I tried again, and again, and again, to get my MHC molecules to change into the proper configurations. Sometimes, I would get one, and then, on a subsequent attempt, find that the one I had gotten to match had mutated. It was like trying to herd cats, only not nearly so entertaining. Have you ever played with a Rubik’s Cube? It was similar to that, except, imagine you’re colorblind and have to randomly turn the 3D square this way and that… then, when you’re done, you have to have someone tell you what the results are.

  For Giddeon, it was easy. He would try to talk me through what it was he saw and felt when he changed his blood into the proper configurations… however, it just didn’t translate into my inadequate brain. He never lost patience as we would try, and then, try, again. This went on for what seemed like an eternity with no real progress being made. The thing that finally did the trick was accidental, as many discoveries are.

  Giddeon broke a capillary tube full of blood, and it splattered onto my lip. I reached up with my knuckle to wipe it away and somehow got a little on my tongue in the process.

  My sense of taste had become quite enhanced during the past four years; I hadn’t really paid it much attention other than just enjoying it at all of the restaurants we frequented. I knew the taste of my own blood, because sometimes I would floss too vigorously in the mornings out of habit. The fluid that had splashed on my lip… it was different. Giddeon knew something was up by the expression on my face.

  “Giddeon… poke yourself. I need a little blood. I want to try something.”

  He took the lancet and popped the end of his index finger. I reached out and collected a bit of his blood on my own finger. I brought it to my mouth and tasted it. I closed my eyes and concentrated on it like a wine taster at one of those contests. Finally, I swallowed and held out my hand.

  “Try it, now.”

  He punctured my skin and sucked up a drop. After setting the capillary tube in a tray, he went ‘scuba diving’, as he liked to call it. When he returned, there were smile lines crinkling from the corners of his eyes.

  “Progress! We’re making progress!”

  He ‘showed’ me the sequences and how close they were. He drew a tube of ‘B’ negative from himself and set it down in a rack near my chair. Over the next 24 hours, I think I must have drunk a gallon of his blood. I could never be a vampire.

  But, it worked. I finally was a perfect match for Melody, in more ways than one.

  __________

  I slept for at least 12 hours. When I woke up, I looked at the clock and noted that there were only 36 hours until the wedding. At that point, I wasn’t concerned so much with
the fact that she was marrying the wrong guy as I was with the reality that she could possibly die if I didn’t make it back over to her side. I showered, shaved and put on my regular outfit… Levi’s 560 jeans, a golf shirt and tennis shoes. Boris didn’t seem inclined to get up from the bed.

  I had nicked myself shaving, and tasted the blood to make sure it hadn’t transmuted back while I was asleep. It still had the same coppery, walnut taste that I had become so familiar with, thanks to Giddeon.

  He appeared on board, in his usual silent manner.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Should I alert the media?”

  Gid smiled. “Not yet. Maybe later. I think it may be possible to have a plan ‘B’.”

  “Plan ‘B’?”

  “For Melody. I have a feeling our movie-going friends from the future can help us.”

  I looked at him with a curious expression on my visage. “What makes you believe that?”

  “I had a dream about them last night,” he said.

  “I didn’t dream anything. I slept like a stone.”

  “Maybe that’s what helped me see them… I don’t normally dream on my own. I think they want to help.”

  I tilted my head to the side in a questioning way. “We can’t even get back there, remember? We tried.”

  “I think they were blocking us.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head in the negative. “I don’t know… I believe they might let us come back, now, though. I got that feeling in the dream.” He thought for a moment, and then said, “They obviously know about Melody… that was basically her cat that came traipsing through the wall. Maybe they know of alternate cures for her condition. If they’ve been watching us the past two weeks, they certainly know what we’ve been up to… who knows, perhaps they can even help you cross back over.”

  “I’ll try anything, but, if they did all of that, wouldn’t they be tampering with their own timeline? Would they do it? Could they?”

  He shook his head, again. “I don’t know. It’s kind of like they have, already. When you get back, you’ll have knowledge of their existence, and that alone could change things… unless they aren’t worried about it. Kind of like us with Daniel. Nothing happened here, or, it was meant to happen.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Or, maybe they know I’m not coming out of the coma and there’s no way I can affect their reality.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t pick up on that,” he said.

  I pointed to my head. “7.7 percent, remember?”

  “I’ve got to get you back before there’s no room for your ego over here.”

  We both laughed at that one.

  “Well,” I said, “there’s only one way to find out.”

  With a flash, we were gone. I don’t think Boris even noticed we had disappeared.

  __________

  We were back in the room with the same 4 people. I took that as a good sign.

  I looked them over as they lay there, and found myself wondering if they viewed life in real time. If so, maybe they had nothing better to do, and really got into the mundane aspects of human existence in the distant past… not that my time in the coma had been mundane, mind you. However, I would hate to think that they spent days and days hooked up viewing the first 24 years of my existence.

  They must have been bored out of their gourds if they had had to tap into that. I hoped for their sake that it was like a download, and they got the whole timeline in just a few hours.

  After our first trip there, it had occurred to me, ‘Why only four?’

  Giddeon thought that maybe they were among the first to use such technology, and it wasn’t in widespread use, yet. I was partial to the hypothesis that the group was related and they were experiencing it together… like watching a television show on family night. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was if they had information that could help Melody.

  This time, they all opened their eyes at once.

  __________

  Immediately, I got that same feeling of warmth and compassion as before. No holograms appeared as they did, the first time, and it occurred to me that most likely that had been for our benefit… so we would know what it was that they had been seeing. The original female on the end smiled. Just the slightest upward curvatures marked the corners of her mouth, and several seconds passed.

  As time dragged out, I began to think that they weren’t going to help us, or maybe, that they couldn’t.

  I feared that they were constrained by laws, or physics, or some futuristic morality.

  __________

  Then, through the wall came a tray, for lack of a better word. It hovered silently in the middle of the room, so Giddeon and I stepped up to it. There, on a piece of paper… plain ordinary paper… was writing.

  In English.

  I beheld a list of ingredients… some I recognized and some I didn’t… thirteen in all. There was a paragraph concerning the proper amounts, and how to prepare and administer them as an elixir. I could tell Giddeon was memorizing what was before him, and I did my best to do the same. He was done almost instantaneously… it took me the better part of five minutes, mainly because I kept repeating it to myself over and over to make sure I had it right. The tray then made an exit just as something else made an entrance through the smooth surface of the silver wall.

  Boris.

  Or, at least the closest copy of him possible. He sauntered to the middle of the room and sat there looking at us with big, yellow eyes… oddly, there was a small scar on his face. He meowed, and then turned his attention to licking a paw and rubbing at the old wound.

  Chapter 67

  My heart was hammering when we returned. Our Boris had moved to the couch, and, I could have sworn he was smiling. He licked a paw and rubbed at his face, also. I shook my head and turned to Giddeon.

  “Did you get it? I’m not sure I remember it all!” I asked and exclaimed.

  “Got it… don’t worry.” Giddeon walked over, sat down at the table and produced a pen and paper. He recorded what we had seen. I was very quiet while he did that, not wanting to disrupt his train of thought. When he finished, I had him check it against my version while I recited what was in my head. I was pleased that I had remembered it verbatim, too.

  “Plan B sounds kind of nasty,” said Gid. “Plus, she has to drink it every day for a year.”

  “I can’t believe it… they actually communicated with us, again. They’re trying to help. Why would they do that?”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  I sat down on the couch next to Boris. “That’s not even original.”

  “Best I could do on short notice.”

  I accepted his explanation. “It just seems like they could be jeopardizing their own existence.”

  Boris meowed and rolled over onto his side, wanting to be petted. I reached over and ‘scratched’ him on his belly.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Giddeon. “Maybe you can’t jeopardize your own existence when new worlds are created with each and every decision… new timelines and new probabilities, you know?”

  “It’s all so confusing,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Or, maybe we’ve been thinking about time all wrong, in our frame of reference. You remember the way some say space is curved?”

  I nodded.

  He continued, “That would include time. It may not really be a straight line… because reality could be more like a sphere. Maybe we went so far in the future…”

  I finished for him. “… that we were in the past.”

  __________

  I decided not to worry about it too much. I don’t know why they gave us the recipe, I’m just glad that they did. I was concerned that there were no directions for getting back, but I hoped they knew that, somehow, we would accomplish it. If that was the case, either they were so altruistic that they risked giving up their own existence, or they knew what they were doing. Or maybe, they
just didn’t care. Maybe they were at the end of time and wanted to do one final act of kindness before they collapsed into a singularity, or, came back around the other side of the sphere, or, flew outwards in a big bang… or, something akin to one of those things.

  __________

  I contemplated the possibility that, perhaps, we are all caught in an endless loop and will forever play out this scenario, over and over, again.

  Maybe all of time is an endless loop. The universe expands from a single point, rushes outwards and forms planets, stars and galaxies; it then exists for billions of years, until finally gravity, or the curvature of space/time, or something else, entirely, brings it back down into infinite smallness, once more.

  Into a single, lonely point.

  Then… it does the exact same thing, again. Over and over and over.

  Could it be that all of the complicated patterns of matter and energy caught within our matrix are not random, but are part of a ridiculously convoluted equation that will always be the same… always repeating? Maybe that’s what eternity is. It’s the reality that we’re all destined to endlessly duplicate what happens. Every moment. Every smile. Every tear. Every bite of food, every touch of skin… every emotion. Every day, every night, and every hour. Maybe, eternity is the fact that we’re all embedded in this cycle, together… forever.

  But, one thing concerned me… what if this is the first time?

  The first time that the pattern is set. The first time the universe has rushed outwards in a glorious, tumultuous jumble. And, this is the only time that free will can ever come into play. What if what is done now is the way things are going to be? For all time. The first of a series of never ending cycles.

  Over, and over, and over.

  More than ever, I wanted to get back to the other side. I wanted at least the chance to tell her once, so that time and time, again, I could repeat it. My words could endlessly radiate into the ether, coloring the cosmos with their message for all of forever.

  I wanted to tell her that I loved her.

  Chapter 68

  Giddeon and I watched her prepare for the wedding. Her mother, her sister and bridesmaids were all fussing over her hair and dress and make-up. Yet, she had a look on her face that was far away. Almost distracted. Almost sad. I knew what she was thinking, because, I was thinking it, too.