Ewold

First the knocking and then the door swung open.  A gloomy grey day struggled to pour in and greet Kate but was blocked by Kyle and Mikle damming the doorway.  The two strapping young lads stood standing at the threshold apologetically carrying a middle-aged man who looked as limp and dreary as the low hanging clouds outside.

“Oh, hi Kyle, hi Mikle,” Kate welcomed them, “oh dear, I see you’ve got Ewold.  It slipped my mind,” she heaved a heavy sigh and pointed to the living room.  “You can set him on the sofa in there.” 

The lads lugged Ewold across the foyer and into the living room.  The overcast seeping in through the window tinted everything melancholy, but there was a gloom emanating from Ewold that was heavier than the grey day that had oozed in; it turned the living room a shade sullen and Kate’s sassy white hair a colourless dull.  Her shoulders wilted as she cast a worried glance at the sofa.  “To be honest,” she said after a moment’s consideration, “it doesn’t really matter where we put him.  The furniture will do with him as they please.”

The lads hauled Ewold to the sofa anyway and dropped him into the cushions.  The sofa groaned.

“The Pfeiffer’s will host him starting on the 26th,” Kyle said, “we’d be happy to come back and carry him there.”

“Well, thank you, that’s very sweet of you,” Kate thanked Kyle out loud, but two whole weeks! was her glum thought.  Unfortunately, two weeks was the officially apportioned Ewold time.

Having sensed Kate’s glum thought, Mikle put his hands on his hips and shifted his weight assuredly.  “Aw, he’s not so much trouble, Mrs. Kristl, he sleeps even more than he used to.”  

Kate took a deep breath.  “I hope you’re right,” she said looking at Ewold on the sofa dubiously.

No sooner had she shown the lads out and shut the door on the gloomy day, than she heard a thump followed by what she could have sworn was a stomp.

“Oh dear,” Kate said to herself, or maybe to the furniture (but talking to it was pointless because it never listened), “that didn’t take long.”

She returned to the living room and surveyed the situation.  Clearly the couch had tipped Ewold onto the floor and, apparently, the armchair had given him a swift kick for good measure.  Ewold had rolled with the kick and had wound up with his head under the coffee table. 

“Who is that, Grandma?” Milan asked.

Kate turned startled.  She hadn’t heard Milan come in.  Milan stood there on the living room floor staring at Ewold on the living room floor with big wondering eleven year old brown eyes.

“That’s Ewold,” Kate said.  She wasn’t sure it explained anything all that much, but right now she wasn’t in an explaining mood.  She was feeling a touch morose.  Her piercing blue eyes that usually sparkled didn’t.  She concluded that the gloom emanating from Ewold was undoubtedly contagious.

“Why is he on the floor?” Milan asked interested.

“The sofa threw him off.”

“Oh,” said Milan, clearly unperturbed by the behaviour of the sofa—the furniture often misbehaved when you weren’t looking (and sometimes even when you were).  Besides, now that he had stood there for a moment, he had begun to perceive the miasma of melancholy floating in the living room—like maybe everything was in a bad mood, which might explain why the sofa gave Ewold the toss.

“Yes, well,” Kate said, “unfortunately, I’m not surprised.”  She shook her head sadly.  “I was half expecting that.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Milan asked fascinated.  And after a moment, “why is he smoking?”  As he stared at him, Milan had began noticing that, to all appearances, the miasma of melancholy in the living room was emanating from Ewold, seemingly seeping out of all his pores and enveloping him in what maybe looked like smoke, or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was a hazy shadow, but either way, it was floating right there under the coffee table, but not really, since it seemed to drift in and out-of-focus and, depending on exactly how you looked, sometimes it was there (if you didn’t look at it) and then it wasn’t (if you did).  None of that made much sense but Milan was getting used to such confusion given that, after all, he was on the Other Side.

The Other Side?  It’s kinda like UFOs, something you either believe in, or you don’t.  And like UFOs, it’s real even if you don’t.  The Other Side is an alternate reality snuggled up so close to ours that a leaky valve or a nocturnal emission of the soul might just slip you into that world.

Technical explanation: a world, or reality, is defined by its uPsi wave, a wave function that is particular to only it, and is defined as the sum-total superposition of all quantum probability waves in that reality.  A uPsi wave is a reality’s quantum signature, and everything within a reality must resonate with it.

Translation: all the vibes on this planet (in this entire universe, in fact) are rubbing up against each other, and their collective resonance becomes an all-encompassing wave, the uPsi wave, the harmony of a reality.  Ever hear of ‘Ohm’?  The mantra?  That’s the sound of the harmony.

But here’s the kicker: since there are an infinite number of probability wave superpositions, there are an infinite number of uPsi waves.  Got an infinite number of uPsi waves?  Then you have an infinite number of realities.  It’s mind-boggling–it hurts the brain just to think about it.  Still, it’s not as bad as it seems: you may have an infinite number of realities, but because they’re all separated by event horizons, you’ll never have to worry about most of them.  This is because an event horizon is invisible, so it’s impossible for anyone to perceive it, let alone the world beyond it.  What I’m saying is you’ll never see them so they may as well not exist, and that’s just as well because otherwise our brains would explode in a massive freakout of quantum infinities—I mean, who can wrap their head around that kind of shit, right?  Other than an acid-head riding the thirty-eighth reflection into the sixty-ninth void, who would want to?

But alas, if only it were that simple.  I did say you’ll never have to worry about most of them.  Like everything else in life, there’s an exception: realities with closely related uPsi waves will resonate with very similar quantum signatures, meaning the event horizon between them is weak, and matter, energy, information, all sorts of shit, oozes back and forth.  That is to say, what you have is an Alice and the looking glass situation: two separate realities seeping one into another.

Ever hear of Chakras?  They’re the energy nodes of your body’s vibes running up your spine and culminating in the Crown Chakra.  And here’s the thing: your Crown Chakra should vibrate in sympathy with the uPsi wave, in harmony with Ohm.  If it doesn’t, you’re a square peg in a round hole hitting sour notes, you’ll feel like a misfit, and sooner or later you’ll find yourself channeling Holden Caulfield.

But here’s the interesting part: certain electromagnetic events (like ones caused by solar storms) can throw an event horizon out of whack and create a temporary portal to a closely related reality.  If you’re swinging misfit credentials, one day a solar storm can hit and, boom, you may suddenly find yourself like Alice, fallen into in another reality, one where the Ohm is more sympathetic to the vibes of your Crown Chakra.

Which brings us to where this digression started: the Other Side, the alternate reality snuggled close to ours.  Like I said, it’s there even if you don’t believe in it.  Its Ohm is almost identical to ours, close enough for vibe leakage and for people to fall through if their Crown Chakra is in desperate need of auto-correct because it’s jamming off-key with Ohm.  The two realities are very similar but not identical.  Ours tends to trend to no bullshit Chuck Norris Blade Runner hard-edged technological, while the Other Side is more Michael Moore tree-hugger touchy-feely Lord of the Rings mystical magical.  So, as a rule of thumb, creative eccentric touchy-feely types not cut out for the rat race tend to be drawn to the Other Side, while uptight bureaucratic types uncomfortable with go-with-the-flow gravitate the other way (it gets more complicated, but that’s the rule of thumb).

“Well dear,” Kate answered Milan’s first question, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Ewold.”  This was only half true.  Kate had some idea, but it involved Lower Astrals and she wasn’t sure Milan, who was still a newcomer to the Other Side and had much to learn, was ready for those.  “I think he’s just asleep.  He sleeps all the time.”

“How come?”

“Well, dear,” said Kate somewhat vaguely, “people say he just kind of gave up on life.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“But can’t you tell what he’s thinking on account of the Mycelium and suchlike?” Milan asked.

This is probably a good time to digress again and talk a little about the Mycelium.  It’s a key concept on the Other Side, but it’s easily misunderstood by the uninitiated and by recent arrivals (Milan was both).  The Mycelium is the amorphous mind-field created by the sum total consciousness of all living creatures, and all living creatures are linked through it.  The mind’s connection to the Mycelium is similar to that of an individual mushroom’s to the mycelium it grows from—in other words, it’s a mystical magical notion of togetherness, something like in your face Kumbaya with Jung’s Collective Unconscious thrown in.  On the Other Side the flow between mind and Mycelium is free and unimpeded; in our world nobody’s ever heard of the Mycelium because there’s no flow—it’s blocked by mansplaining rigidity.

To newcomers to the Other Side this unobstructed connection to the Mycelium can be disconcerting, weird, or worse—a high-voltage live-wire ride that zaps a poor soul straight into loco land.  But, as far as Milan was concerned, things weren’t quite so dire.  Milan’s problem with the Mycelium and the Other Side was that he was convinced everyone always knew what he was thinking.  He wasn’t entirely wrong, but it was only partly true.  The feelings he had were actually due to people sensing his aura through the connection in the Mycelium.  They weren’t really reading his thoughts—they were intuiting how he felt.  Milan didn’t buy that.  He was convinced his mind was an open page.  Which sucked because you never know who’s reading your thoughts.  Think about it—there are always thoughts you’d rather keep to yourself, right?  Thoughts that, if made public, would be awkward, embarrassing, or downright disastrous.  And if you’re convinced everyone knows what you’re thinking, well, it means you have to constantly watch what you’re thinking.  But that, of course, is impossible.  The brain is an anarchist, and thoughts are always popping up, and as soon as one does and you slap it down, well, it’s too late because anyone reading your mind will have noticed it too.

“No, dear,” Kate said, “don’t be silly.  I can’t tell what Ewold’s thinking.  I just feel his aura.”

“On account of mushrooms?”

“Actually, it’s the Mycelium, but yes, something like that.  If you must know, I feel a very dreary emptiness radiating from Ewold.  I’m sure you feel it too, dear, don’t you?”

As soon as Kate mentioned it, thinking the thought of feeling a very a dreary emptiness radiating from Ewold brought on a feeling of dreary emptiness radiating from Ewold, a dreary emptiness that felt desolate, and melancholy, and a deep bleak grey way more empty and barren than a deep blue.  Milan wasn’t sure, but maybe all this had something to do with the smoke he though he saw floating around Ewold?

“So what’s he doing here?” Milan asked, his voice glum from the dreary emptiness; he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

Before saying anything Kate took in a deep breath.  “He’ll be staying with us for the next two weeks,” she said.

“Two weeks?  Juice!”  A spark of interest flashed through the bleak grey of Milan’s dreary emptiness.   “But grandma, why?”

“Well…it’s because he doesn’t have anywhere else to stay, so everyone takes a turn hosting him.  Two weeks at a time.  Believe me,” Kate’s voice sounded a note of concern, “it’s a last resort for him—”

At that moment a thud thudded interrupting Kate.  They turned to see Ewold with his eyes wide open casting a dull glare from under the coffee table, which had clearly just hit his head.  He surveyed the situation through the foggy haze that swirled around him, glanced an apathetic heavy-eyed glance at Kate, at Milan, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

“Uh, maybe we should move him?” Milan suggested. 

Kate was about to blurt out in vexed frustration that, quite frankly, she didn’t give a damn, but she caught herself and thought about the situation for a moment.  She recalled a time when she actually cared about Ewold—before she had learned the hard way that having him around was nothing but a big grim annoyance—and concluded that it wasn’t healthy for Milan to bypass the caring phase and jump straight into grim annoyance.

“Yes…you’re right,” Kate sighed, “let’s move him, but I think we need help,” she said, knowing it took two strapping lads to bring him in in the first place.  “Poldo!” she shouted in the direction of Poldo’s study, “we need a little help!”

Poldo was Kate’s partner, but even though Kate was Milan’s grandmother, Poldo wasn’t Milan’s grandfather—Milan called him ‘uncle’ instead, even though he wasn’t really his uncle either.

Poldo appeared with a ‘this better be important because I’m very busy’ countenance.  Poldo was always very busy.  “Help?  Help with what?”  His disgruntled topaz yellow eyes under unruly white eyebrows suspiciously regarded Ewold over a pair of wire-frame reading glasses.  “That’s Ewold, isn’t it?” he muttered (Poldo always muttered).

“Yes, dear, that’s Ewold,” Kate said.

“Tell him not to move!” Poldo hollered over his shoulder as he dashed off hurriedly, no longer quite so disgruntled, and on second thought, very interested.  “Measurements!  I need to take measurements!”

“Poldo, wait...” Kate called after him but it was too late as there was no reply from Poldo around the corner.

Poldo quickly returned with a handful of gadgets and scurried up to Ewold.  “I wish you’d let me know he was coming today.  I would have been prepared!”

“I forgot he was coming today,” Kate said.

“Prepared for what?” with aroused curiosity Milan asked.

“For taking measurements of course!” Poldo muttered.

Milan watched with great interest as Poldo got down on his hands and knees so he could reach under the coffee table, fruitlessly tried to swish away the haze with his hand, gave up and began placing electrodes on Ewold’s forehead.

“Poldo, dear,” Kate said, “as I was trying to say, before you begin maybe we should move Ewold from under the table?  I don’t think the furniture likes him too much.  We could clear out the downstairs bedroom and leave him with just a mattress.”

“Mmm…I don’t think so,” Poldo grumbled, “It would probably smother him.  I don’t trust that mattress.  But…” he stopped attaching electrodes, backed out from under the coffee table, and paused on his knees until an idea emerged.  “…maybe if we leave the dresser in the bedroom, it might keep an eye out for him.  It’s kind of a goody-two-shoes, that one.”

The three of them contemplated Ewold dubiously.

“For now let’s at least pull him away from the table so he doesn’t hit his head again.” Kate suggested.

“Yes, yes, capital idea,” Poldo said as he stood up, “it will make my work easier if I don’t have to do it under that damned table.”

“Poldo, be careful of how you speak of the furniture.  You’ll only set it off.”

“What, because I said ‘damned’?”  Poldo grabbed Ewold’s leg.  “It’s because I’m in a hurry!  The measurements only work if the brain is free of conscious thought, and right now he’s in Deep State.”

“He sleeps most of the time so he’s almost always in Deep State,” Kate pointed out.  She grabbed the other leg and breathing heavily from the effort, she and Poldo dragged Ewold out from under the coffee table.

“Yes, yes, until he isn’t sleeping,” Poldo muttered catching his breath from the exertion, and again began attaching electrodes to Ewold’s forehead.  “Carpe diem, make hay while the sun shines, strike while the iron’s hot, all that kind of thing if you know what I mean.”

“What are you measuring, uncle Poldo?  Is it that smoke that comes out of him?”  The haze had followed Ewold from under the table.  Milan didn’t realize that it was Ewold’s aura, and that he could sense it, but not actually see it, which was why it wasn’t necessarily there when he looked directly at it.

“Yes, yes, well, no, it’s not smoke, not exactly.  But that’s not important anyway.  I’m trying to find out where he is.  I think he’s lost in some Lower Astral and I’m hoping to locate which one it is.”

“What’s a Lower Astral?” Milan asked.

“Well dear, I wasn’t sure you were ready to learn about the Lower Astrals just yet…” Kate looked at Milan, “but now that Poldo has mentioned them…”

“Why wouldn’t I mention them?” Poldo mumbled under his breath as he attached the last of the electrodes.

“No reason, if you think Milan’s ready.”

“Of course he’s ready,” Poldo declared as he stood up, “everybody has to know about Lower Astrals.”

A Lower Astral is a sleepless night.  A night of tossing and turning and thinking and tossing and turning and drifting through thoughts you’re thinking as you’re tossing and turning, drifting through strange odd sequences following their own dreamlike paths, meaning you aren’t really thinking.  And if you’re not thinking, then maybe you’re dreaming, but you can’t possibly be dreaming because even though it’s the wee hours you know for sure you’re wide awake.  So there you lie open-eyed tossing and turning and thinking and you find yourself drifting in familiar places, but something’s wrong, they’re places you remember, but not like this, and maybe they don’t look wrong but you know for sure they feel wrong, like there’s a vaguely disturbing shadow, a specter you don’t see, but you know for sure is lurking somewhere in there.  Yes, there’s something wrong but it’s dawning on you that it’s not just the places, it’s everything, the places, the thinking, the drifting, the sleeplessness, the tossing and turning, none of it is right, none of it, it’s like Chernobyl, creepy, surreal but very real, dark and abandoned and dead but strangely alive, the radioactive miasma completely invisible but a constant ominous presence, and somewhere it registers that you’ve never been to Chernobyl, that these memories aren’t the same memories you remember in daylight—they’re off, they’re weirdly clichéd, they’re strangely trivial, they’re dark, there’s an indistinct doom lurking in them, and it makes no sense because on the surface they seem to be just stale vapid everyday places, outlandish only in their banality, and round and round the thoughts go, round and round the memories go, round and round in your head, and you wish they’d stop but they don’t stop, and the shadow follows the thoughts, the shadow taints the memories, taints the vapid places, places that by now you really wish you could avoid but you can’t, and you feel yourself inexorably being drawn to a doom that you don’t see but you know is there waiting, lurking, brooding beyond the bend in the next thought, past obscure ill-defined recollections, ill-defined recollections hidden among clichés, recollections that are always receding, drawing you on, pulling you on, haunting you, haunting you now, not back then, back when you lived the memory, back when life was in the present and immediate and not a dimly remembered past that isn’t exactly the way it was because back then it was vivid and commonplace, and now you’re remembering insipid and unsettling, and it casts shadows over everything you’re thinking about, unless you’re not thinking, unless none of this is thinking but it’s dreaming because it’s almost dawn and you haven’t slept, but maybe you’ve finally dozed off, and yet you know you’re awake because that shadow of stupid anxiety will not leave you alone no matter how hard you try to explain it away.  You toss and turn and toss and turn and you don’t know it, but you’re stuck in a quagmire of apprehension, forever trapped in the wee hours of an undefined foreboding.  Worry.  Fear.  Angst.  Crap.  A morass of angstcrap.  You can’t get out. That, among other things, is a Lower Astral.

As far as Ewold was concerned, it all started in midsummer with the Three of Coins.  He remembered that evening well, lovely late June, walking about aimlessly, enjoying the velvet feel of the summer air.  But shit happens, shit was happening, and shit meant that there was a dark side to Ewold’s aimless wandering.  The shit had started around dinnertime when he began to feel one of his not infrequent dead-end what-the-fuck-is infinity bummer vibes crawl out of the festering swamps of his subconscious.  He knew he had to get out.  He had no idea what he had to get out of, or why he had to get out, just that he had to get out.  So, as he did when the bad vibes hit, he hit the street.  The evening felt good and he soon thought he felt better, but this was just an illusion.  This is because wherever he went, wherever he was, there he was.  And wherever he was, the bummer vibe was.  It went wherever he went, no way to ditch it.  The bummer vibe had him trapped.  Every day was the same.  Everything he did was the same.  He felt tired.  He wasn’t living.

Maybe it was his job.  He spent all day, every day, holed up in a secure cubicle in a secure building staring at a secure vidScreen, eyeballing corporate contracts written by algorithms, inspecting every clause and sub-clause, scrutinizing the mind-numbing fine print, examining every stupid punctuation mark—just in case the algorithm screwed up.   A comma in the wrong place could mean big bucks down the toilet, and corps had no sense of humour when it came to big bucks going down the toilet.  Which meant the pay was good if you knew what you were doing.  Ewold did.

Then again maybe it wasn’t the job.  After all, it was a job, it was work, it wasn’t supposed to be entertaining.  But it was 24/7.  There was nothing else in his life.  Life wasn’t…wasn’t something.  Wasn’t where his younger self had thought it would be.  He was nobody on a slow train going nowhere, and he had no idea how to get off. 

So there he was, walking aimlessly, bummer vibes messing with his head, and, across from a Starbucks, there it was: a tiny hole-in-the-wall with a not so tiny red ‘Fortunes Read’ hologram floating in front of it.  He’d been on that street before, but, unlike the Starbucks, he’d never noticed it.  His first thought was this is ridiculous – how could I have missed this before?  Okay, so maybe the hole-in-the-wall was small enough to get lost in the urban fabric, but that bright red in-your-face laser-sharp ‘Fortunes Read’ holo sure as hell wasn’t.  His second thought was that ‘Fortunes Read’ was undoubtedly a psychic snake-oil scam designed to take suckers in for a ride, and no way was he going to get hornswoggled by hogwash.  But the problem was that, despite his completely rational (as far as he was concerned) doubts, he found himself strangely drawn to the hole-in-the-wall.  He couldn’t help himself, it lured him, pulled him, mesmerized him from somewhere deep inside the festering swamps of his subconscious, hypnotized him like Zu Zu Mamou softly chanting gris-gris in some black water Louisiana bog.  Maybe he knew that he was on a slow train to nowhere and he had to get his shit together before the train let him off at Funny Farm station, and well, who knows, but maybe a little occult psychic hoodoo might jog him onto a different train with a different destination.

Conscious Ewold knew that ‘Fortunes Read’ would be a bunch of malarkey.  However, his Jungian deeper self stubbornly insisted otherwise.  Subliminal notions kept bubbling up into his message center: So you take a little chance, what’s the downside? he heard his mother say.  A couple of credits?  You can afford that.

Ewold hated his mother’s frequent nagging, but given that in this case it was coming from his own subconscious, he considered the suggestions for a moment and came to a decision.  What the hell, why not?  And anyway, maybe it’ll be entertaining.

A little bell above the door tinkled as he entered, and as soon as it did, second thoughts hit.  The thing was, it wasn’t just the tinkling bell.  It was the whole enchilada—the smell of lavender and rosemary incense that greeted him, the red velvet décor, the beaded curtains, and the middle-aged woman that stepped through them.  She had long raven hair and wore a long boho hippy dress, jangling earrings and bracelets, rings on every finger, heavy makeup around her dark eyes.  It all reeked touchy-feely mystical-magical cutesy gypsy New Age.  Way too touchy-feely mystical-magical cutesy gypsy New Age.  It reeked showbiz.  It smelled of a stage-set designed to reel the suckers in.

“So…” the woman said as she stepped through the beaded curtain.  With her head slightly tilted her dark eyes contemplated Ewold with a faint smile, gazing at him, seducing him, until he so wanted her psychic spyware to violate him.  He stood there dumbfounded, unable to move, and then the thought I’m naked! hit him.  He apprehensively looked down to check and realized he wasn’t, but the ground below him had dissolved and he was suspended above a dark bottomless abyss and the weird thing was he wasn’t freaking out or anything, he was just floating there all hassle-free and chillin’ like he was Buddha on valium or something.  But Wiley E. Coyote suddenly realized there’s no ground below his feet, the valium went vamoose and a major case of vertigo hit Ewold’s panic button big time.  Holy shit!  Stop!  Stop!  He was in stomach churning free-fall.  This is bullshit!  This isn’t real! his skepticism screamed at him, this is SIM, I’m in deepFreak!

“You’re feeling trapped,” Ewold heard the woman say matter-of-factly.  Boom!  It was immediate.  He was on solid ground.  But he didn’t remember being this close to her, close enough to feel her breath, to smell her jasmine fragrance.  Her smoky make-up and deep red lipstick almost-smile excited him.  She had that je ne sais quoi allure of an attractive woman who’s old enough to have been around.  How had he not realized she was so damned beautiful, so damned electrifying?  It had been ages since he’d been with a woman.

“Please,” bracelets jangled as she motioned at a chair facing a little table covered in red velvet.  Lavender and rosemary incense burned in a little silver bowl, Quartz, Amethyst and Agate glinted in another.  Not knowing how to deal with female proximity, Ewold was grateful to sit down and feel his own space again, to get in touch with his skepticism again, which had been smothered in her close presence.  She took her place opposite him, 

“You feel a need to change,” she said, “but you can’t…everything’s closed to you and you find yourself in a box.”

How the hell does she know?  Okay, she might assume he had a problem—most people who walked in probably did.  But how the hell did she know his problem wasn’t unrequited love?  That one must be popular.  Or money troubles?  Must be all the rage—everyone’s got money troubles.  Or something stupid, like a decision he couldn’t make?

“I’m Krystal, by the way,” the woman said with that red-lipped almost-smile, “and you are…?”

“Oh, I’m…I’m Ewold,” Ewold stammered. 

“Well, Ewold, your answers are here,” she tapped an upside down deck of cards with a long red fingernail, “in the Tarot.  But nothing in life is free,” she added, “especially wisdom.”

Aha!  This is it, Ewold grasped his skepticism, here comes the money pitch…pay before we start!  

But her almost-smile widened into bewitching, his skepticism evaporated, and he coughed up the credits, instant digital transfer authorized by an iris scan executed by Krystal’s app.  

And that’s when the Three of Coins came in.

Krystal spread the Tarot deck for Ewold to see.  The images were block-prints, the colors basic, sometimes smudged.  They looked primitive and reinforced the ju-ju vibes he was getting.

“The Tarot,” Krystal said quietly, like it was a secret, “will tell you where you’ve been…where you are…and where you’re going...”  She gathered the cards, shuffled them, and offered Ewold the deck.  “Pick one.  This will be the card that tells you where you’re coming from.”

Ewold pulled a card from the middle of the deck.  It was the Three of Coins.  It meant nothing to him—just a triangle of three black and yellow disks entangled in flowering vines 

“Ah, but three is an interesting number,” Krystal said, “three is the realization of the tension of two, the tension of opposites has exploded into a trinity that’s vibrating with harmonic energy—mind, body and spirit, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the vibrations within a trinity are pregnant with possibility, with new beginnings.  But, you see, coins are the element of earth,” she gestured downward with her hand, “so the Three of Coins means the energy of the triad is about to burst into something in the material realm, in other words, about to become something, something tangible—is there a recent plan, a project, in your recent past?”

Ewold didn’t answer.  This was all ridiculous.  First of all, it was an awful lot of baggage to pin on one stupid number.  And second of all, he hadn’t been doing anything other than going nowhere.

I told you so, Ewold’s ghost of skepticism chided, she puts on a good show, but it’s all bullshit!  

But, you’ve been stupid enough to pay, a second ghost butted-in, so you might as well get something out of it. 

You’re sitting across from a very exciting woman, a third ghost pointed out, and, well, you never know, so don’t be an idiot, don’t screw it up! 

As if three ghosts weren’t enough, there was a fourth, one from deep down in his Jungian pit, the one that had convinced him to pony up the dough in the first place.  Dude, you’re still on the train to Funny Farm station, it reminded him, and maybe this is where you can get off.

“Cards are like words,” Krystal said, “they don’t say anything by themselves.  So go ahead, pull another one.  It will tell us where you are now and begin your story.”

Ewold drew another card: a tramp in rags with a savage little creature biting his ass.  That didn’t look promising.  

“Ahh, it’s Le Mat, The Fool,” Krystal said, “the first step of a journey on who knows what road to who knows where, and,” her eyes sharpened, “you never know what’ll bite you along the way.  So is it a fool’s journey?  Or is it inspired?  Either way, it’s the first step, nothing has happened, so everything’s possible.  But, you see, that’s the problem,” she tapped the card with her long red fingernail,  “you drew the Fool, potential, after the Three of Coins, conception.  Potential to conception is the natural order of things, but conception to potential is going backwards, it’s going from something to nothing.  Going backwards can cause all sorts of cross-currents and it can mean rough sailing.  But then,” she shrugged, “it all depends on The Fool’s journey.  The next card will tell us where he’s headed.

Ewold wasn’t sure he wanted to know where The Fool was headed, but Krystal’s almost smile, persuaded him to pull a third card—La Maison Dieu, a stone tower fractured by fanciful lightning, around it people were falling through a sky full of strange coloured balls. 

Just then, just as Ewold sat there looking at the card, and before Krystal could explain anything about La Maison Dieu and false assumptions suddenly crashing and leading to cataclysmic change, or maybe something about consciousness being suddenly expanded in a flash of illumination, before she could explain any of that, a torrent of charged energy from a solar flare crashed into Earth, warped the magnetic field, and in a dance of mingling smashing particles, cascaded down the atmosphere.  Electromagnetic currents and cross currents and eddies swirled downwards, and as they reached the ground a highly improbable (but still entirely possible) quantum fluctuation occurred.  Caused by a twist in the polar axis of the solar flare’s energy stream, a mass of virtual charged particles appeared for a thousandth of a second in a transformer vault under the sidewalk in front of Krystal’s Fortunes Read shop.  For a thousandth of a second the powerful burst of energy from the non-existent temporarily existing virtual particles interacted with the transformer’s magnetic gradient causing a virtual electromagnetic explosion.

Ewold was blinded by a brilliant ephemeral flash that Krystal didn’t see.

When his sight returned, the first thing Ewold noticed was that his bottom felt hard.  And, as he looked around in startled astonishment, he was forced to come to an inescapable conclusion: he was no longer sitting in a chair across from Krystal, there was no La Maison Dieu card, no red velvet, no smell of lavender and rosemary incense.  His brain attempted to come to some understanding as to what, exactly, had just happened, but it could come to no conclusions inasmuch as thinking proved problematic due to intense confusion.  What was inescapable was that he was now parked on the sidewalk, sitting on his bottom across the street from the Starbucks.  He looked around.  There was no Fortunes Read hole-in-the-wall, and there was no Fortunes Read holo.

How long had he been sitting here, he wondered?  He checked the app wrapped around his wrist.  No signal it said.  Weird.

He looked across the street at the Starbucks, and as he looked at it, trying to reassure himself that something familiar was, in fact, familiar, it wasn’t.  And as he looked some more and pondered why it wasn’t, it inexplicably drew close until it was right in his face.  He was now gawking at Starbucks like he was nearsighted and sitting in the front row of an IMAX holoFlick, and he began to notice that maybe it wasn’t exactly Starbucks after all.  It was a coffee shop, it looked almost like the Starbucks, but not really, especially given that the name on the sign read Starshine Coffee Shop, and not Starbucks.  And as soon as he realized it was Starshine and not Starbucks, it abruptly flew away, far away, and he was now peering at it from way up in the peanut gallery.  This can’t be…unless it’s a dream.  Was it?  Why else would he be sitting on his rear end on the sidewalk staring open-mouthed at the Starshine Coffee Shop as it zoomed in and out of his face?  

OK, too weird is too weird.  What the fuck is going on?  Had Krystal slipped him a tripTab?  But when?  She hadn’t even touched him.  Then he must be in some bizarre simulated reality, but how?  And when had he slipped into SIM?  When he was doing the Wiley E. Coyote bit?  Or was he crashed out at home and all of this crazy evening was a dream?

Unfortunately, Ewold didn’t have time for more deliberation because all of a sudden, with no warning, a tsunami of every emotion he had ever felt came rushing in on him, a monster wave of extreme feelings that tossed and tumbled him in a whirlwind of confusion.  He forgot all about the sidewalk he was sitting on, about the Starshine Coffee Shop zooming in and out, and felt like he was suffocating and desperately needed to come up for air, but he couldn’t.

What the fuck!?  Krystal stared in disbelief at the empty chair.  One moment Ewold was there, then in a sparkling of pixie dust, he wasn’t.  Gone.  She was stupefied.  She believed her cards, she had complete faith in them, but this…this was ridiculous.  Or was it?  Trying to steady her trembling hand, she picked up La Maison Dieu.  Of course she knew it well, but was there some deep meaning she’d missed?  Yes, it warned of abrupt change, of a rude awakening, of assumed truths suddenly fracturing.  But this?  What was this all about?  How could Ewold just vanish right in front of her face?  The card’s warning of cataclysmic change was one thing, but this, this was, well, what the hell was this?  Who’s assumed truths were fracturing?  Ewold’s?  Hers?  Or, there was that more esoteric meaning of the card: flash enlightenment—consciousness expanded in an unexpected burst of Zen insight.  Had Ewold’s consciousness suddenly expanded?  Was he off somewhere, blissed out in the nothingness of the Void?  Ewold enlightened? …couldn’t be...  But then, where the hell did he go?

Ewold was on the Other Side.  The quantum fluctuation that caused the micro-second temporary exponential expansion of the transformer’s magnetic gradient had torn an opening in the event horizon.  Ewold’s Crown Chakra vibes were sympathetic with the Ohm vibes of the Other Side.  Who knows, maybe deep inside he was an emotionally repressed romantic, but whatever the case, the tear in the event horizon was just long enough and wide enough for him to slip through.

And because he was there, on the Other Side, Ewold’s mind was connected to the Mycelium, but having just arrived he had no filter, which explained why he was feeling everything that anybody and everybody and anything felt, feeling it direct, feeling it all at once.  He sat there helplessly tumbling in raging emotions that whirled and spun through him, and he tried to remember, remember anything, but remembering was useless when all thoughts were fraught with such intense feeling.  All he could do was laugh and cry and rage and hate and love all in the same instant.  He knew something had gone very weird and there was no way to undo it, no way out, and trying figure out how to get out was like banging his head against a hard wall, banging his head on a hard wall of raging emotions, and he had no idea how to stop them, stop those emotions.  Nothing was clear because he couldn’t think, he knew he was losing it, he’d shot way past the funny farm he had been trying to avoid, and had landed in batshit fucking crazy.  My Head!  My head!  I’ve to get out of my head!

Dark clouds appeared, he could see them, there, above the Starlight Coffee Shop, fast moving they rolled in, churning angry clouds, and they covered the entire sky and blotted out the sun, transforming the lovely endless summer evening into a menacing twilight.  The clouds filled the sky and still they kept coming, coming at him, straight at him, dark clouds seeping into him, seeping through his skin into his veins, coursing in his blood, darkening his soul, darkening his aura, blackening his mind.  And his despondent blackened mind hit a bleak miserable low and hopeless wretched despair began to metastasize deep inside his soul, and he saw that he was nobody, never was, never had been, always a has-been, he was completely useless, a nothing.  And he understood that because he was nothing there was no point to anything—no point, never had been.  All that fucked up emotion had no point.  Batshit insanity had no point.  Life had no point.  Life was just an endless desert of nothing.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Krystal felt a chill of dark vibes crawling up her spine.  Creepy bad joo joo vibes.  She took a deep breath to calm herself and pulled another card, hoping for an explanation.  Le Diable.  The Devil.  Addiction.  Feeling powerless.  Feeling trapped.

Before there is a beginning, before there is a road, before there is anything, there’s nothing—a nothing of potential, a nothing of infinite possibilities, of endless paths, but only if you step out of nothing into nothing will there become something.

And once you do, if you do, once you step out of nothing into nothing and it becomes something, the something can never be undone.  Once you do, and the nothing becomes something, that something is your life.  You’re in it, and you’re in for good.  And if it sucks, tough shit, no way out, you’re in for good.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Lightning flashed jagged from the angry black sky, split open the sidewalk, and Ewold fell through.  He tumbled down—down, down, down, weightless falling in inky blackness, down, down, down, eternally in a dream.

Eventually he found himself standing on a worn asphalt road crossing a parched barren plain, flat and featureless as far as his eye could see.  Wires drooped along ancient wooden Telegraph poles that followed the road, leaning and rickety with age.  Tumbleweed drifted in the wind, but he felt nothing, not even a slight breeze.  A relentless sun high up in a cloudless sky beat down on the scorched terrain, rising heat currents warped the air.  He should be roasting, but he wasn’t.  None of it made any sense.  Ewold looked up and down the road confused.  In either direction the view was identical: the road, the tottering telegraph poles, the sagging wires, all marching along until they got lost somewhere faraway in a heat-hazy horizon barely visible in the flat nothing distance.  Ewold could swear he heard a far off lonely harmonica quietly playing in the soft whispering wind.  What the fuck was this?  A scene swept up from the cutting room floor of some forgotten spaghetti western?

Confused, he could think of nothing else to do, so he started walking up the road, walking towards the heat-hazy horizon.  Or was he walking down the road in the other direction, to the other heat-hazy horizon?  He wasn’t sure.  It didn’t matter.  It was all the same.  He walked for hours.  Days?  Weeks?  Was there time?  He kept walking, walking, but he was still there.  Walking, walking, walking forever, but he was still there, exactly where he was.  Always still there, next to the telegraph poles and wires on an endless road to nowhere.  Ewold was going nowhere because he couldn’t see any there to get to.  He couldn’t stop and just be where he was, even though no matter where he went, that’s where he was. 

If a road never ends, either it’s infinite, or it’s a loop.  Is there a difference?  If you’re walking on an infinite road to infinity, does it mean you’re going somewhere, or are you going nowhere?  You can hit a gadzillion steps, but there’s always gadzillion-plus-one.  Always.  And, between gadzillion and gadzillion-plus-one, there’s an infinite number of fractions, so are there an infinite number of steps between gadzillion and gadzillion-plus-one?  And some of those fractions you’re stepping on are irrational infinities like π or √2.  If you land on one of those, do you drown in that infinity?

Or maybe you’re on a loop.  Like infinity, a loop has no there, no destination.  You never arrive.  But unlike infinity, a loop has memory.  You might not notice, but you’ve been there before.  Many times if you keep going. 

And if you keep going, going forever, and never get there, is that the same as a dead end?  Infinity is a concept.  Dead end is a concept.  Dead end lives in the mind.  Dead end infects the mind.  It’s a mind game, a fixation, an obsession, and an obsession easily becomes an addiction.  Addiction means you are a slave to the devil.  Addiction is Le Diable.  It’s a Lower Astral.  

Ewold had landed in a Lower Astral.  His life had been an endlessly tedious existence that he obsessed about but never stopped to find out where he really was.  And now in the Lower Astral he was still forever going somewhere to nowhere.  He was stuck in a dead end.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men...

Ewold felt tired.  So tired.  He heard voices again.  Always he heard voices in his head.  It hurt, his head hurt.  He opened his eyes.  The coffee table floating above him acted as if it had just smacked him.  Or maybe it was the floor’s fault, given that for some reason he was lying flat on top of it underneath the coffee table.  He looked around bleary-eyed, and noticed with an apathetic heavy-eyed glance a grey-haired woman standing there looking concerned.  He couldn’t distinguish her features through the foggy haze that surrounded him.  There was a kid he’d probably never seen before staring at him next to her.  Surely he didn’t know them.  He was tired, so tired, much too tired to make introductions.  Ewold closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

…couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.