Digital Mischief by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Digital Mischief by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Story by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Zero Sum

10 Out of The Fiery Furnace 02 (1962)

It was Catherine who noticed first.

Eric and William came out of the hallway into the living room. Mrs Morrow had turned on the overhead lights and the room was brightly lit.

“Heavens! That’s you, Eric.” Catherine said with some surprise, then paused, her eyes widening, her mouth dropping, just the merest bit. 

“Eric, what’s happened to you….., Oh my poor darling.” Catherine rushed to Eric.

William couldn’t see what the fuss was about so he came round the other side of Eric and then he saw what Catherine saw as she gently held Eric’s face in her hands. In the revealing overhead light Eric looked like he was a hundred years old. 

Eric couldn’t work out what the fuss was, so he quickly turned to look at his reflection in the glass panes of the hall door.

“Oh, bugger!” Eric frustratedly stamped a foot.

Eric turned back to Catherine and William with a gesture that comprised of shrugged shoulders, rolled eyes, a dumb smile, and finishing with a shake of the head.

“Sorry I forgot to…,ah,….” Eric half turned and pointed down the hall to the front door of the house. 

“I was so enjoying just sitting outside; the cool night air sighing in the Norfolk Pines, the ozone and damp sand. I love that smell; and the sound of the waves breaking and shushing up the beach, that last sibilance and silence as the water finally sinks into the sand… Well I forgot to reset.” Eric looked at the assembled company with a look of abject apology. 

“Mrs. Morrow, I am so terribly sorry you had to see me like this.” Eric ran his hands over his face, “Hhhmmmm…”  then said, “I want you to hold Catherine’s hand. This might be a little alarming, but I want to assure you that none of you are at risk. This won’t hurt a bit.” Mrs. Morrow, her distrust of Eric growing, took Catherine’s hand and gave Eric a sour look. 

Eric then shook himself like a wet dog; but instead of water flying off, there were shards of coloured light rainbowing off him as the angular momentum of the shake threw them from Eric’s clothing, his face and hair, and finally his shoes; before they twinkled out to nothing.

When the shaking stopped Eric adjusted himself, straightened his back and looked at The Staffords and Mrs Morrow. “There you are, all done.”

Mrs. Morrow screamed and pulled Catherine in front of her, clutching her arm and peeping out from behind Catherine’s shoulder. Catherine was dumbfounded and William looked like he’d just been plunged into the middle of the biggest problem he had ever faced.

To the three observers Eric had apparently just shaken away about fifty years. His face; no longer a contour map of wrinkles and lines outlining the terrain of a long life; appeared taught, his eyes brighter, teeth straighter, whiter. Eric was younger. In fact he looked younger than when William and Catherine had last seen him.

Catherine decided that comforting Mrs. Morrow would allow them both time to unconsciously deal with what they had just seen. “This is definitely more your line of country darling.” She said to William as she took the older woman softly by the shoulders and led her away to the kitchen. 

“Mrs. Morrow and I will go and get the brandy. I think we could all do with a drink after that little performance.” She looked at Eric with frank curiosity. “You areall right, aren’t you Eric?” She thought it best to check before she left them.

“Oh yes, fit as a flea, me.”

“Well…., OK…” Catherine still wasn’t sure; but then how could she be sure. She too had no idea what had just happened.

Catherine guided a babbling Mrs. Morrow through the dining room and into the kitchen. The older woman was in shock. A little comfort and hot sweet tea would take the edge off that, but Catherine was going to have a stiff snifter. 

“Bloody Eric!, God love him. Nothing is ever simple with that man.” She was fond of Eric and had long ago accepted the major role he played in their lives. Bess adored him and Eric lived for the time they spent together; and William owed almost everything he had achieved to Eric and the Trust. Even though they had not seen Eric for a few years, he was family.

Back in the lounge room William had adjusted the lighting and the men had sat down by the cold fireplace.

“So lets start with what just happened.” William cutting to the heart of the matter. “You just shook off several decades of senescence; and I did note the photonic effects the shaking produced. I’ll assume that they were…., “time”…, though what manner of “time” they were you’ll have to fill me in on later.” William paused before setting off again. “Given how simple it looked to achieve, I’m also assuming that this is something you do regularly. Which begs the question, “why didn’t you…, “reset”, is that what you called it, “reset”; before we got home? Surely whatever it is that has you so concerned might better have been described by an Eric we could recognise, or at the least, one who wouldn’t destroy the equanimity of our housekeeper with parlour tricks. Poor Mrs. Morrow. You’ll have to work hard to get back in her good books.” 

William, as ever the practical, pragmatic humanist, had accepted that something entirely outside his experience was happening around him tonight, and he knew that it would take some time to understand what had just happened and what it might mean for his family; but Mrs. Morrow’s mind wasn’t up to such acceptance. What had happened was an assault on her reason, possibly her faith, certainly her everyday experience. William would talk with her as soon as the right opportunity presented itself. He was always able to soothe Mrs. Morrow when she became upset.   

“Yes, I really am sorry.” Eric looked genuinely sorry. “You’re right. I was hoping for a long quiet chat with you and Catherine before Bess gets up in the morning. This involves her too.” Eric looked frustrated with himself. “I just buggered it up; I forgot. I’ve been very busy lately.”

“What’s Bess got to do with whatever this is?”

“Just about everything.”

William was internally adjusting to the events of the last few minutes. There was no rational explanation for what Eric had just done, so it was either a kind of mass delusion, or it had happened and it was real; but as yet simply unexplained. 

“Eric, I’ve gotten used to the Trust and its funny ways and I’ve always thought, in the back of my mind you understand, that the work of the Trust and my part in it is of a larger scale than I’ve ever been able to accurately gauge. I won’t pretend to understand that scale, or the true nature of the work that you and the others do, and I’ve always been so very grateful for the welcome the Trust gave me and the support it has shown for my work, but what has happened here tonight requires detailed explanation. I’ve got all night, and you appear to have “time” by the neck.” 

“So do you William, so do you. You just don’t know it.”

“I’m in no position to debate that point so why don’t you just tell me what you mean.”

A short while later Catherine, having calmed and then helped Mrs. Morrow to bed; leaving a generous measure of brandy in a glass on the bedside table; rejoined William and Eric in the lounge room with the bottle of Hennessy and three balloons. 

The men were deep in discussion and seemed almost to be using a different language but Catherine, hearing a few key words, understood that they must be talking about folded space. It was William’s speciality and Eric had been his supervisor and mentor, so there was nothing unusual in their discussion, except the look on William’s face as Eric threw numbers and algorithms around with a kind of hurried urgency. Catherine could see that William was hanging on to every word as though his life depended on it, which incidentally, it did.

Catherine dragged a chair over to join the men and poured the brandy. William and Eric brought their discussion to a temporary close and gratefully accepted the proffered balloons of warming liquor, but Catherine could see that William was deeply distracted.

“You two look like a couple of conspirators. What have you said to William to so distract him?”

Eric offered a gesture suggesting that William might like to field that one.

William, rolling the balloon between his hands, warming the brandy and inhaling the vapours, looked at his wife over the rim of the glass. She could feel his anxiety as William looked directly at her; obviously trying to choose the right words to explain the inexplicable. As usual, William cut straight through to the heart of the matter. 

“Leaving aside Eric’s startling performance for the moment;” William said; his face looking as if he was trying to wrestle an answer into submission;  “apparently we’re meta-humans,” William said flatly, “both of us; though in different ways; and apparently our daughter is even more “meta” that us.” William stopped at that point to gauge Catherine’s reaction.

She looked at Eric with simple disbelief. “What is this nonsense Eric?”

“All too true I’m afraid.” Eric took a slow sip of the brandy.

“What does he mean darling; and what’s this about Bess too?”

“Eric, you’d better handle this. I’m not sure I’ve understood you well enough to convey even the smallest bit of the important meaning in what you’ve just told me.” 

Eric tightened his lips and nodded.

“Catherine, I see you’ve hung a new picture.”

At this both William and Catherine burst out, “Oh, for God’s sake, Eric…” but Eric put his hands up. “Bear with me,” He looked at Catherine more closely. “The picture Catherine; its one of yours, isn’t it? What do you call it?”

Catherine face became a mask of caution. She looked at the painting and then at William and finally at Eric, her face slowly freezing to a quiet stillness. Her reply, “The Fiery Furnace”, was a little anxious.

“Those twisted and tortured elements look like a car; an abstracted, folded car. A car being consumed by a chaos of flames. And those two other elements seemingly emerging from the maelstrom. What was your thinking as you worked on it.?”

A dream from a few moths ago came back to Catherine as if someone had just hit replay.

“It was critique. The ugliness of cars and car related stuff. To hell with it, I thought; burn it all up.” That sounded like bravado. Her quiet deceptive tone suggesting even Catherine didn’t believe that.

“It’s not like you to choose an “ugly” subject. Its quite confronting and yet very beautiful, in its own unapologetic way; but was that really what you were thinking, or did you…see, something else.” Eric was looking right into Catherine’s eyes. 

She thought she could almost feel him in her mind, and she knew he was right. The painting wasn’t some kind of social critique, it was history, a waking dream filled with a burning vision of flame and twisted, tortured metal. She remembered the look on little Bess’ face when she had finished the work and called her in to give her opinion. 

Bess had looked at the painting and turned to smile at her mummy and said, in all innocence, as though it were the child who had to reassure the mother, “You won’t die Mummy.” It had been a statement of fact, and Bess had given her mum a cuddle and gone back to play with Ellie, leaving Catherine a little perplexed and somewhat shaken.

The painting of the “The Fiery Furnace”, executed with an obsessive haste, had been in response to the vivid and disturbing nightmare that Catherine had had some months ago. The dream, in which she and William had been driving the Humber down Barrenjoey Road towards the little bridge behind Bilgola, had seemingly come from nowhere; and, while she’d “seen” the crash and the subsequent fire, she had been left with a deep uncertainty about the outcome. What had happened to William, what had happened to her? That uncertainty had become the defining theme of the painting. Could one survive death in a fiery crash?

What Catherine had thought or felt at the time, she could no longer accurately remember, but now it seemed that little Bess had already known, and Eric knew too, and William; she looked at William, the man she loved, the father of her child; he knew too it seemed. Catherine was trembling.

“Will we die tomorrow Eric? Or will it be something else?” It seemed a perfectly rational question to Catherine; and one that required an immediate answer.

“You weren’t in the car.” Eric tisked. “Sorry….; you won’t bein the car.”

Catherine looked at William who was nodding his head confirming that Eric was right, everything would turn out OK.

“This is too much!” she exclaimed.

“Yes it is; but I’m also afraid that it might not be enough.” Eric looked down between his knees , wringing his hands a little. 

“William you might remember that Einstein claimed, to a friend, that his wife, Elsa, was still alive, though she had died some time ago. His belief in the continuing life of his dead wife was almost certainly a cognitive coping mechanism; he wanted her to be still alive, so he believed it to be true. 

Of course I don’t think he really believed he might be able to access that continuing living reality, but it comforted him to think that somewhere, sometime, she was still living.

Einstein was completely right, but really had no clue as to the nature of that life; what it might be constituted of, how she might have lived.

He was still bound up in the sequential nature of existence. He was quite literally a man of his time. Her death, being in the past, simply made her inaccessible to him. Of course he knew just about all there was to know about space and time, at that time. He’d created most of that ontological mass. What he didn’t know was how simple it might have been for him to find Elsa, if he could only transcend the temporal dimension.”

Eric paused to gather his thoughts before plowing on. Catherine and William had been listening closely, probably in the hope of some explanation they could get their material brains around.

“Imagine for a moment that your Humber had a button or switch on the dash that you’d never pushed or flicked. It had just been there when you bought the car. Imagine that, having never had cause or thought to activate the switch, you had also neglected to learn from the manual what the switch was for. What it did. Imagine then that one day a person says to you, “Oh, I see you have the new Humber with the time switch.” and then went on to explain how manipulating the switch gave access to slices of time to which you could “drive” the Humber.”

“Sounds like the set up for a children’s radio serial. “The Horological Humber”; Adventures across the clock. Creates a whole new set of possibilities for the Sunday afternoon drive.” William’s joke seemed to lighten the moment a little.

“Funnily enough, it is about that simple once you get the knack; and believe me, you both have the knack. Let me show you. Let me flick that switch.”

And he did; and both William and Catherine just slumped back in their chairs, their eyes wide with wonder and amazement; their faces flipping from smiles to open mouthed awe, then consternation, then irreducible stupefaction. Whatever it was that Eric had started had nothing to do with the real world and both their minds were entirely taken up with visions; hallucinatory, impossible dreams; but for all the sudden uncertainty, they were in no danger.

Eric observed the couple for a short while, smiling, they’d be like this for a while. 

He then wandered back through the dining room to the kitchen and into Mrs. Morrow’s quarters. Slipping quietly into her room he noted with some relief that she had found sleep, though her brow remained furrowed and Eric could see that hers was a troubled sleep. “Well, that’s hardly surprising.” Eric said to himself.

He smiled gently at Mrs. Morrow’s sleeping form and quietly laid a hand on her forehead. 

Mrs. Morrow’s brow relaxed and a hint of a smile appeared on her lips. “There, that’s better isn’t it?” 

Satisfied, Eric rejoined William and Catherine who were still lying in their respective chairs, their eyes now closed, their breathing deep and regular. Behind their closed eyelids Eric noted the REM like flickering of their eyes and he wished more than anything that he could see what they were seeing in the way they were seeing it. It cast his mind back to his own Damascene moment; his own conversion to the new, bigger reality. That moment when all the contradictory, confusing uncertainties of his everyday human existence had transmuted into a new teleology that was both staggering in its extent and implications, and yet, uplifting and invigorating. A new life, a life without end.

But that had been so long ago, and his memory had discarded so much more than it held that his existence had become a day to day thing, always in the moment; until he had become aware of the coming trouble. 

He crept away from William and Catherine and found his way to Bess room at the rear of the house.

Slipping inside he sat down on the edge of Bess’ bed. Bess’ little Staffie, Ellie, was curled up with her on the bed. Bess was sleeping soundly and Eric could tell that she was dreaming, so he insinuated himself into her dream. He knew she wouldn’t mind.

Little Bess was playing with Ellie on a grassy hillside covered in wild flowers. In the distance there was a range of high snow covered mountains from which direction a light, cool breeze was blowing. Ellie was chasing butterflies, leaping and barking in an exposition of doggy joy. A glorious sun backlit the fluffy clouds as the breeze swayed the flowers in the sunshine. Bess turned towards Eric and seeing him, jumped up and ran to him, wrapping her arms around his middle. Eric stooped and picked her up, holding her out at arm’s length; Ellie leaping at his feet.

“How’s my favourite girl?”

“Perfectly fine, thank you Uncle Ecci” she offered rather formally, before he brought her in and they gave one another an enormous hug full of good feelings.

“This is a dream isn’t it Ecci?”

“Yes sweetheart, it is; but I just had to see how my favourite Little Miss was doing.”

“Is it time Ecci. Is that why you’ve come?” 

“Yes my darling, it’s time.” He put Bess down and Ellie fussed around her, then standing up against Bess, in that way that Staffies do, Ellie looked from Eric to Bess and back again. She barked once.

“Can Ellie come too Ecci. She loves adventure.”

“Yes Ellie can come too. In fact Ellie’s a very important little girl, we couldn’t be without Ellie.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want to be without Ellie, and Mummy and Daddy of course.”

“That’s right, we’ll all be going together; but I have some other things to do now, so you have fun and we’ll see one another when you wake up in the morning.”

“This is going to be the biggest adventure…” Little Bess stooped and grabbed up a stick, then threw it down the hill for Ellie to fetch. As she ran down the hill after Ellie she shouted over her shoulder, “See you then. Love you.”

Eric felt a swell of emotion. Little Bess was so full of innocent wonder and enthusiasm for life. Even the strangest things seemed unable to unsettle her. 

Eric slid back to his place on Bess’ bedside, smiling down at the little girl’s sleeping form. He stood slowly and crept from the room.

Story and Graphic by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Zero Sum

08 Who Is Bess (2019)

“Then you’d better tell me who I am and what I’m to do.”

“Well you obviously know who you are as far as your life up to this point is concerned. None of this changes any of that. You’re the you that holds the memories of your existence, your experiences and learning, insights and your dreams. There is only one you and you are it. The one and only Bess Stafford. Genetics took care of that. You are, in fact, Elizabeth Ruth Stafford, decorated police officer and investigator. But that’s not all you are. It’s whatyou are that is probably more important than whoyou are. It’s what you are that makes you so important, indeed, it makes you unique. So let me try and lay this out for you.

Some decades ago it became apparent to cosmologists and astrophysicists that the universe was continuing to expand and that expansion could not be adequately explained by any of the current models of reality.

Do you know anything about M theory and branes, string theory; any of those sorts of things?

I like the physical sciences. I like their rigour. I try to keep up, and yes, I’ve heard of these things and have a laypersons understanding. They’re all about higher dimensions, over and above the four we know and live within.

Well here in the material universe you’re human, as I am, here. But through the discordance, on the other side, we are both tensors in the mathematics of those higher dimensional spaces; incredibly complex algorithms, you much more so than me of course, Those mathematics define an idea of reality that is specific to each of us, but also general to the greater space, like ingredients in a cake.”

“Sort of like the sugar that becomes the sweetness. This is the field Dad worked in; Folded Space Time.”

“Just so.”

“So you’re saying that when we jump through “The Discordance,” Bess capitalised the words verbally, “we lose our materiality and become…, what exactly?” She’d clarify exactly what “The Discordance” was when she’d discovered where it led to. 

“Heard of dark energy and dark matter?”

“Of course. They’re alI the unseen stuff that accounts for the majority of the mass of the universe. If I remember correctly dark energy is about 70%, and dark matter about 25% and together they may be responsible for inflation, the continuing expansion of the universe post big bang.”

“Yes that’s right, here, but that’s not all they are. What do you know about the Zero Point Field?”

“Its a quantum vacuum space of incredibly low energy; theoretically at absolute zero temperature, so no potential or kinetic energy. Yet I seem to remember that none the less things still pop into and out of existence even when there is no energy gradient to exploit.” 

Yes they do; but most of those spontaneous creations burst like bubbles in the sun. They expend their brief existence coming into being and then decaying. You know about Heisenberg and Schroedinger?

“Uncertainty and Entanglement?”

“Right. So much for Einstein’s “spukhafte Fernwirkung.” 

Well, every now and then one pops into existence and abides. This is usually the result of the intersection of those branes I mentioned earlier. Without going into the mechanics of it all, these spontaneous and persistent little tangles of corpuscular energy can become entire universes following there own physics, rolling out to their natural conclusions. 

This universe of yours, ours really, is just such a one. One of many, very many. Though this one has been modelled for stability and its ability to support biological life. Beings just like you and me, Bess; and all the other creatures that have ever existed on this beautiful blue green ball and all the other balls of rainbow colours that fill this universe. This universe is a school for solving the problems of biological life. That is why you are here, why you’ll go through the curricula so many times. This is your school, where you have and will learn all that you’ll need to finally join those beings, including your parents, who have matriculated to a higher dimensional set.”

“Those higher dimensional sets sounds notionally like a kind of heaven.” 

“A heaven with its own problems, but yes, in a way. There is a school of thought that suggests that the human concept of gods and heaven is a kind of foreshadowing infusion of that possible future where all will be revealed and made good, where the individual can move mountains. A kind of garden to which all the world’s Candides retire to contemplate and create the best of all possible worlds.”  

“You also started out as one of those energetic little balls. You’re your own little universe, modelled by your parents consciousness, and their human genes of course, and finished off in the fire of life.”

“Their consciousness? I don’t understand. Do you mean that what was on their mind when I was conceived had a determining effect on how I would turn out?”

“Sort of; in fact its all down to consciousness; but these weren’t random thoughts, nor were they merely the cognitive components of the sex act, whatever that may be when its at home. Your parents entered what would commonly be called a trance state. Be thinking the Buddhist’s “Om”; a means to access one’s true self and mind. Of course its wasn’t really a trance, it was more like a functioning “Om”, a sort of “fOmmmmm” that allowed them to synchronise their consciousnesses and hold an idea of you as a living potential field, and then to transfer one of those tiny corpuscles of energy from the ZPF into that potential field.”

“Oh my giddy aunt! I’m a “star baby”!” Bess imagined a naked baby sitting in the core of The Large Hadron Collider. The baby was laughing.

This was really getting difficult to keep a grip on. Like sand running through her fingers, Bess was only able to understand a little of what Hansen was saying. The rest was just running away. She’d have to sweep it all up later for further analysis.

“Were my…., are my parents like me? Do they have these super powers?”

“Oh yes; and quite powerful powers they are too; but very abstract. Your parents were never really meant for this world. They were only ever destined for a single iteration before matriculation. Of course, they weren’t meant to disappear from your life in the way they did. That was, or will be, the result of exigent circumstances. There’s simply not enough time to fully brief you on all the aspects of what’s happening and why it all has to be so urgent.”

“But Eric, I’ve just been an ordinary copper plodding my way through, and now you tell me I’m really some George Lucas fantasy character.”

“There’s nothing ordinary about you, Bess.

You’ll remember that little boy you found in the New England Ranges back in the early eighties. He’s about to put his hand up for the seat of Armidale. He’ll be standing as an independent at the next election and he’ll shoo it in. He’ll remain the member for Armidale until his retirement in 2052, by which time he will have been PrimeMinister in the first government made up entirely of independent candidates. You were, or should I say will be, the proximate determining factor in that outcome. You see if you hadn’t found him when you did, well stochastic factors would have set in and in all likelihood…” Hansen’s face saddened.

“You know what’s really beginning to bother me is whether or not I did any of these things on my own; or were you there, always nudging here, restraining there, pushing ideas into my mind. I know you have access. I’ve seen you many times in daydreams, or when I’ve been thinking of you. Am I just some sort of glorified tool?”

“Marx believed we are all the tools of history.”

“Yes, well Marx believed a lot of things, but that’s not an answer.”

“No, of course not. You’re able to determine your own life, follow your own hunches, pursue your own dreams, you have “free will”. I’ve only got access to your conscious processes and you have to, in a sense, invite me in. I can only suggest, I can’t compel you to do anything. I’ve gotten used to being the irresistible force when it comes to taking a look “inside” and giving a gentle nudge, that’s my burden; but you are the immoveable object. There is no shifting you from your chosen purpose.”

“You talk about these iterations. How many iterations will I go through?”

I don’t really know. Its uncertain; though I have seen six of you so far.

What? No idea at all? Sounds like the wheel of life. Is what’s through “The Discordance” like the bardo?

We’ll not be going all the way through this time. We’ll be using it as a transport hub, sort of like an interchange, but yes the space we’ll be going through, an an intermediate space,  which is, yes, actually like the bardo, in the sense that it is a place between your present life and a kind of rebirth as the new improved you, but only if you view it from this human perspective. When you get there it won’t seem like the bardo at all. Humans have never been very good at imagining transcendence or what “heaven” may actually look like; but then how do you imagine the non existent?

You see time is our problem here. Materiality requires the arrow of time. Without it reality becomes incomprehensible to the human mind, just a blur of instantaneous sections of the quantum waveform collapse. Pick a moment, any moment and it will be a perfectly formed three dimensional data cloud…, like those images of chaos that were so popular back in the 90’s, nothing like a photograph or image you can interrogate, it will entirely lack context. 

Each moment is just itself; but add time, and you get process; context and meaning emerge. Consciousness feeds on that meaning and re-contextualises it further, creating narratives of possibility, pursuing the future, re-interrogating the past, turning the present into a never ending flame fuelled by the past to fire the future.”

“Heraclitean Fire. Will I become an “immortal diamond” as Hopkins hoped he would?”

“In time, perhaps in time.

You see Bess, nothing is really as it seems. From those tiny quanta spontaneously emerging, to federal elections, famines and warfare, nothing in this world is as described on the tin. Everything is always subtly different, serving another purpose, seeking the resolution of an undisclosed, hidden agenda. Good works and bad, its all the same to the universe. It just keeps on keeping on like the old paint ad; and just like paint on a wall, what you see is the paint, not the wall behind it.”

“Consequences.”

That’s right. Ingersoll knew a thing or two about the reality of reality. There never has been “right and “wrong”, just what happens next. That’s the glory of biological materiality. The future is always unknown, a Peter Pan adventure for adults.

I loved Peter when I was young, but now I see him in so many people; childish pride, boastfulness, lacking any real long view. We can’t all be Peter. It just doesn’t work.

Yes, things have come to a bit of a sorry pass at this point in human history, but you’re on the side of the angels; at least in as much as the angels have a side.

Alright, let’s say that while I don’t understand even a small part of what you’re suggesting, I can accept all that you’ve said. Mainly because its you that’s said it. Let’s say that I’m willing to accompany you through The Discordance. There’s just one thing I need to understand. What has marijuana got to do with all this?

Ah, yes, the welcoming weed. That’s quite simple really. If you were to just jump into the discordance unprepared it might very well shred your consciousness to unconnected filaments and that’d be the end of that. You’d still exist but as discrete sets of individual ideas no longer networked to each other, you would literally lose all meaning. When, if, you came back after such a traverse you’d almost certainly be a mental wreck; aphasia, inability to maintain coherent thought, loss of motor control. It wouldn’t be pretty. 

Getting stoned loosens the mind by adding a stochastic element to your consciousness at the quantum level. Think of it as a preventative pill to forestall the worst headache you could ever imagine. It slows the sorting leading to the quantum collapse, creates a kind of rubberyness that allows your consciousness to stretch and twist without actually tearing itself asunder. 

“It’s a relaxant.”

“Simply put, yes. Marijuana has a clinical effect like no other in this application.”

“We had to smoke some dope on a course I was on years ago. I hacked and coughed my way through the joint, I just felt silly. Oh and hungry. I got the munchies. Then I began to worry that they were all looking at me. To be frank it wasn’t all that pleasant.”

“Well there’ll be none of that tonight. I’ve been breeding weed for….., Well lets just say I’ve got it down.”

“Alright then. Lets go.”

“Good thinking. While we’ve got some time left here, I would, none the less, like to get you to a place of safety as quickly as possible. Once we get there we can talk through all this and I can give a sufficiently detailed briefing.” Eric opened the small shiny hinged tin and got out a packet of Tally Ho papers and a small zip lock bag of mull.

Bess watched as Eric rolled the joints, noting how very good at it he was. The finished tube and its contents an almost perfect cylinder, one end folded over, the other fitted with a small roll of thin cardboard; something the lips could hold without sogging up the rolled paper. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers had nothing on Eric.

When he’d finished rolling he handed one of the joints to Bess who accepted it awkwardly, not really knowing what to do or how to hold the thing. He put another to his own lips and flicking the Zippo, applied the flame, drawing down a very generous lungful of smoke.

While he held his breath he indicated with the Zippo that Bess should put the joint to her lips. She did so and Eric applied the flame while Bess tried in her inexpert way to ape Eric. It may very well have been the best weed in the world but Bess still fell to hacking and coughing. When she’d regained her composure she held the joint at low arms length and gave it a look, then turned to Eric with a big grin on her face.

She took a few more tokes, the coughing abating as the smoke took its effect. With Eric’s continued encouragement she finished the joint.

She was a little unsteady after smoking the reefer and let go the occasional giggle. 

“This is ridiculous.” Bess muttered under her breath. She felt a bit foolish having arrived at retirement and never having recreationally smoked a joint in her life and now here she was acting on evidence she couldn’t really say was actually evidence and behaving as if she understood what she was doing. The truth was she didn’t really have a clue. And the whole lot was now lain over with weed wonder.

“OK, are you ready Bess?” Bess giggled a yes.

“Look into my eyes. Make sure you hold them in your view until we pass through the discordance.”

“I’m as ready as a person who’s never done this before and has no idea what to expect, but yes,” Bess giggled again, “I’m as ready as ever I’ll be.”