–by Michael Jordahl

PROLOGUE

There’s a chance I’ll be murdered before I can finish this and spill my guts. I know Nasa will do what they must to keep the secret–the secret I am about to divulge to you. After certain recent events, I feel I must.

I first learned of the Aravi back in 1980 when I was in the Air Force. I was passing a bottle of home-made moonshine back and forth with some red-neck Marine one night when he told me all about the Aravi, and the Oort Cloud Empire. He did seem too stupid to make this stuff up, but it was so far-fetched, I blew it off as drunken babbling–until I watched it unfold before me!

You see, its not Earth that’s the prime real estate around our star, it’s the Oort Cloud. Of course we humans are a little biased toward Mother Earth, but the Oort Cloud inhabitants are not human. To them, The Cloud is where its happening; the inner solar system is boring, not to mention lethal. (That’s the other reason they live in The Cloud: the solar wind is deadly to them.) They don’t have a body made out of meat like you and I, but some kind of energy that can be “dissipated” by the intense solar wind of the inner solar system. Other than that little problem, they are practically immortal.

There are literally billions of little icy homes for the Aravi in an almost endless sea of teeming metropolitan centers across vast expanses of space. According to what this Marine had eavesdropped on, Nasa knew about the Aravi for many decades, and co-existed around the same star without incident.

But there was a problem. A big, bad problem, and they called him Kor. He was a criminal of the highest order, some say the most evil entity there ever was, and for a city of untold billions, that’s bad. He was captured and he and the icy snowball he called home were cast into the inner solar system where his home would become his prison. He would be imprisoned inside the diamagnetic cavity trailing the comet known as 81P/Wild, or Wild 2, to circle the solar system for eons, before the comet’s orbit would decay enough for it to finally fall into the sun, and Kor’s energy would be annihilated; he would have plenty of time to think about his crimes.

Now, like I said, Nasa knew about the Aravi, the Oort Cloud, and even the fact that Kor, the most dangerous criminal in the solar system, was circling the sun in their “back yard”, and it was all tolerated until September, 1974, when Wild 2, and its silent passenger came within a million miles of Jupiter, altering its orbit, and sending it reeling into the innermost solar system, changing its orbital period from 43 years to just 6 years.

This was just too close for Nasa, and a meeting of their top brass was convened and they came up with a bold plan to get rid of Kor once and for all: they would send the space capsule Stardust on a rendezvous mission with Wild 2 under the guise of collecting comet dust for the public. In reality, they would carefully extricate Kor from the comet’s coma, and in a special container, the aerogel Stardust Sample Container (SSC), bring him to Earth, only to be put aboard the New Horizons Spacecraft heading out of the solar system, under the guise of exploring Pluto (and beyond).

This has all been accomplished and you can Google Nasa Missions to fact-check. On Feb. 7, 1999, the spacecraft Stardust was launched, flew into the coma of Wild 2 on Jan. 2, 2004, and, after collecting its “sample”, successfully deposited the canister in the desert sands of Utah on Jan 15, 2006. The canister was immediately transported to the Cape Canaveral AF Station in Florida, where it was put aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, and destined to leave the Earth 4 days later, Jan 19, 2006.

Well, you got to remember that this was all under Military control, and so you might not be surprised to find out that when Nasa ran its first test after launching, Kor was not to be found. He was out, walking free upon the earth, under the protective dome of Mother Earth’s geomagnetic field. This was all a closely-guarded secret, of course, and only recently did I discover that Kor was not only free on Earth, but…oh no, someone’s banging,,oh noo h e lp

–Anonymous letter found inside a typewriter

I met a man

Who had a plan

To make me very rich,

And I was low

On cash and so

I listened to his pitch.

And for a fee,

He told to me

The secret scam he knew;

And if you send

Ten dollars, friend,

I’ll share it with you too.

There’s dirt in my shoes

I walked a new path today

I’m on foreign soil

The ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuang Zhou, tells of a dream he had in which he was a butterfly. Upon waking, he was no longer sure if he was Zhuang Zhou, who had dreamt of being a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.
I’ve heard of a similar story about a guy who suddenly found himself treading water in total darkness, with no idea as to how this situation had come about or where he was, or, for that matter, who he was. All he could do was to continue treading water and wonder. Finally, the sky started to lighten off to what had to be the east, and then the sun came up in all its glory.
At first, all he could see was sea and sky. Then, there it was: a dark form–an island off to the north. As he swam closer, he could see that the tiny island was actually some kind of lava formation formed from an underwater volcano. In fact, it looked just like a man’s convoluted brain jutting up out of the sea. As he neared it, he could see that the entire island was fissured in two, with a sizable gap between.
He reached the shore of the eastern side, only to be greeted by a witch. “What is this place?” he asked, “Where am I?”
“Welcome,” she said, cackling with a hideous laugh, “I have been waiting for you. You are the chosen one.” Then she pointed her long, skinny arm toward a path behind her, and said,”Only he can tell you what you wish to know. He sits up on the bridge strung across the precipice, waiting for you. You must follow this path up to the bridge. Now go!” Not knowing what else to do, he started up the path.
Almost out of earshot, the witch called, “When you come to the dark ravine, you must cross it on faith alone. You can do it, for you are the chosen one!”
Soon he neared the top of the rocky isle, and could even see the man sitting cross-legged out about half-way across the bridge, but sure enough, there was a deep, dark ravine right across the path, with no way around.
He believed in the power of faith, but he certainly was no “chosen one”, so he reluctantly turned around, went back down the path, and explained to the witch that he was the wrong guy and all, and she told him of another way.
“You must swim around to the other side of the island, where you will meet a great and learned man. He will show you another path. But let me warn you, that way is harder still.”
By now, he had nothing to lose, so he dove into the water and swam around to the western shore. Sure enough, an old bearded man in a grey suit stood there with arm outstretched. ” I’m professor Eisensteinium,” he offered, ” and I can help you get up to the bridge…that is why you’re here, I assume.” He almost looked comical with thick glasses and a long, white beard. “You must follow this path up the hill,” he began, “but whenever you see a book lying on the path, you must read it. All of it. Or all will be for not, for the man on the bridge will not talk to you unless you do.”
So the man started up the path and came upon the first book. It was a science book on magnetism, electricity, and such. He read it and moved on. Next came a book on philosophy. Then another, and another. Soon, the books were coming in stacks. Books on Religion, quantum mechanics, Transcendentalism, and metamorphosis. He read and read and read, and in time, he could see the bridge–but he could also see that there were so many stacks of books on the path now, that it would take a life-time to read them.
He went back to the witch. She directed him to her path again, and said, “If you believe you are the chosen one, you will be. You must have faith.” After reading so many books on so many subjects, the witch’s words seemed to have the ring of truth to them. He marched up the path, mustered all the faith he could, and stepped out over the ravine. Instead of tumbling head-long into its depths, his foot came down on something solid. When he looked down, he could see a bridge across the ravine–it had been there the whole time, but he hadn’t seen it before! He strutted across it, thinking, I AM the chosen one, and walked out onto the long bridge with the man sitting on it.
Looking out from there, he could see the sea and sky were mirror images of each other.
When he approached the man sitting there, he could see that the man was asleep. He gently shook him by the shoulder, and said,”Excuse me, sir, I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m really quite lost and”–just then the man looked up, and their gaze met–they were one and the same!
“I was having a dream, ” said the man sitting cross-legged. “I was lost, and seeking a man to help me, I found…myself…who was dreaming…”
.

     Truly, I AM the universe, a dream within a dream within a dream…

It always gets me when I read about how scientists specializing in sleep studies invariably say that one only dreams during REM sleep. When I drove production truck in the mines, I would always doze off on midnight shifts while my truck was being loaded. Under the biggest shovels, it would take three scoops, or about one minute before the shovelrunner would blow his horn, telling me I was loaded; under smaller ones, it could take as long as fifteen. I slowly began to realize that to sleep is to dream–always.

Once I got the technique down on how to remember my dreams upon waking, it was very plain to see that we dream all the time, but have a built in eraser-head when we wake.

I started experimenting with sleep-paralysis which is the perfect state of mind for dream control–the ultimate high. I even told these guys in a dream once that I wasn’t really there, and if they didn’t believe me, just watch–and then I forced myself awake.

What baffles me more than anything is how is it that I can be totally surprised in a dream; Am I not the one making it all up? Also, there have been times when I was just drifting off, thinking about one thing when suddenly I jerk, and realize I was dreaming about falling off a bike. Two dreams at once? Anyway, the world inside our heads is just as rich as the one outside, and since we’re going to spend one-third of our lives there, we should try to learn its language of symbolism and enjoy its mysteries. This is truly a world without consequences.

I don’t know what happened to Memories # 5.

CHRISTMAS, 2015

Boone Lamoine knelt before his father’s icy grave and wept. Huge, shimmering tears, as if in a parting gesture of consolation, warmed his frosted cheeks before falling to be frozen in the snow. He pulled his scarf tightly about him as his long, dark hair whipped violently in the howling wind. The snow swirled madly around him, and for a few minutes all was white; the world had disappeared just as surely as if he had been struck blind. A deeply religious man, the story of Paul on the road to Damascus flitted through his mind.
“Boone!” came a voice barely discernible above the ferocious wind, “C’mon, let’s go!” The last place Cindi, Boone’s wife, wanted to spend Christmas Day was in a fucking cemetery. She was already a little pissed for having to go with him to the church for the Christmas program, and she probably wouldn’t have if little Celeste wasn’t going to sing a solo–Cindi was a hard-core atheist. As a young child, she’d had religion crammed down her throat, both figuratively and physically, one in the pews and the other in the church basement; it had left a bad taste in her mouth. Oddly enough, the thought that her own daughter may be going through the same thing never entered her mind. “Celeste will kill us if we’re late!”

Venus, Goddess of Love,

I know you have two sides:

The righteous one who seeks

And the guilty one who hides.

As Morning Star,

Though you adorn

The Sky

And move the heart,

Your watchful eye upon the morn

Means lovers have to part.

As Evening Star,

When lovers meet,

You kindly look away,

And hide your face

Beyond the hills

With lovers free to play.

Out of gas and feelin’ low, walkin’ down this lonesome road,

Eatin’ dust, and swallowin’ my pride;

I need a lift to get some gas, but all the cars are goin’ past,

So I’m walkin’ down the road and thumbin’ for a ride.

Inspired by a farmer’s dog, I drop my thumb and start to jog,

But which is worse, I really can’t decide;

I couldn’t run for very far, so I sacrificed my candy bar,

And I’m walkin’ down the road and thumbin’ for a ride.

Well, its Sunday morn, and church is out,

And now here comes all thee devout,

But they left the church and forgot what they learned inside;

Their big, warm smiles are real nice, but their hearts must be as cold as ice,

So I’m walkin’ down the road and thumbin’ for a ride.

A car pulls up, it’s Sheriff Grimes,

He says he’s warned me many times,

He’s sorry but the law is cut and dried;

He’s goin’ to have to run me in, but he doesn’t understand my grin,

Now I’m ridin’ down the road, at last I got a ride.