Poetry and Mushrooms

As soon as Milan woke floating in midair, the floor flew up and crashed hard into him. 

Ow!

He blinked his eyes and tried to clear his head.  It didn’t, so instead he felt his bottom.  It was sitting on a rug.

This is a dream.

He looked around and at first the room did nothing.  Then the wintry cold morning light began to stream through half-open pattern printed curtains, lightly touching the angular furniture.  It was at this point that the room woke up oddly familiar and comforting.

No, it can’t be.  This is a dream.  It must be.  He couldn’t possibly be sitting on his bottom on the rug on the floor in the little guest room with the star cut twin beds.  No way.

And yet, as he sat and reflected, the more he reflected, the more it became undeniable.  He was sitting on his bottom on the rug on the floor in the little guest room with the star cut twin beds in Grandmother Kate’s house on Willowleaf Lane.  Yes, he was quite certain he was.  It was just as he remembered it.  But Grandma had moved overseas more than a year ago, and her house was now someone else’s’ house, so this didn’t make much sense.

This must be a dream!

In truth, he had dreamt of Grandma Kate and this little room in her house where he would stay on overnight visits, dreamt about them many times since she’d moved away because he missed it all so much.  Sometimes these dreams were very vivid, but he always knew they were dreams.  This time was different.  This time it didn’t feel like a dream.  He shook his head and rubbed his eyes.  Nothing changed.  There he was, still on his bottom on the rug on the floor in the little guest room in Grandmother Kate’s house on Willowleaf Lane.

If it’s not a dream, what is it? Maybe I forgot I’m playing a SIMgame?  But that was silly.  How could he forget he was playing a simulated reality game?  And besides, no SIMgame would take place in his grandmother’s house.  Why would it?

Or would it?

No, that is silly.

Having come up with no postulation to explain his circumstance, he continued to sit on his bottom on on the rug on the floor in the little guest room in his grandmother’s house, waiting and wondering when things would sort themselves out.

They will sort themselves out, won’t they?

Of course they will.  They must.  Things always sort themselves out.

But sometimes not in a good way.

But I’m in Grandma’s house, so that can’t end up being bad, can it?

Well, is it really Grandma’s house?

The question had no resolution, but his mind kept thinking, the thoughts kept flowing, and as he sat and philosophized, unable to come up with any hypothesis capable of explaining his circumstance, the dawn sun quietly rose shining through the morning window and the rays slowly crept up and touched him cold.  Yes, the wintry daybreak sun was cold.  This would have been strange enough, as he was quite sure that warmth was an essential quality of sunlight, even in winter, but then, as the pale sunbeam touched his skin, it broke into a twinkling rainbow of a thousand sparks.

But where’s the glass prism?  You need a glass prism to make a rainbow.  Unless it’s raining, of course, in which case you don’t need the prism, but those rainbows happen outside, and I’m inside and it’s not raining in here.  So, if none of this makes sense, maybe I just think I’m thinking but I’m not.  And if I’m not thinking?  Then I really must be dreaming.  Unless, maybe, I’m dead?  Oh, no, what if I’m dead!  Is this what it feels like?  But then if I were dead, I wouldn’t be thinking, would I?

As his theorizing proceeded, it slowly became clear there perhaps no conclusion was forthcoming, so, still sitting on his bottom on the rug on the floor (as there seemed to be no good reason not to be), Milan decided to stop trying to comprehend his situation.  Maybe if he accepted it instead, trusting himself to trust himself, something might become clear.  This decision, unfortunately, led to another unexpected circumstance that he couldn’t possibly have expected: he was overwhelmed by a sudden surge of intense uncontrollable feelings.  Thinking must have been jamming, emotionally speaking, but trusting obviously wasn’t because now every emotion he had ever felt, every sensation of love, joy, fear, sadness, rage despair, all mixed themselves together inside him and tumbled like clothes in a dryer.  He felt like shouting in joy to tell the world he was crying the deepest blues, enraged with the meanest reds, cowering in the yellowest yellows and laughing at it all.  The intense wave of swirling contradictory emotions that overcame him short-circuited whatever was left of his thinking and he sat there, stunned in the chill sun, tears welling in his eyes and his bottom still on the rug on the floor and not moving.  This was not good.

At this point there was a knock on the door and Grandma Kate poked her head in like she always did, like this was any other day, even though it wasn’t.

“Milan, it’s you!  Are you allright?  I knew I heard a thump up here!  Poldo almost had me believing I was just hearing things.  He can be so silly sometimes!  Anyway, why don’t you get up off the floor and come down and have some breakfast?”

Grandma Kate lived with Poldo.  He’d been her partner for years.  Milan always called him Uncle Poldo even though actually he wasn’t really his uncle. 

Downstairs Grandma Kate and Uncle Poldo were sitting eating at a nicely breakfast laid table in front of the kitchen fireplace.  Unmistakable hunger pangs convinced Milan to willingly join them.

After a while, after Milan’s head reappeared from the bottom of the oatmeal bowl, Uncle Poldo asked, “Did the bed toss you out?”  He was dry and droll as usual, but an unexpected air of tenderness encroached on his words.

Milan was convinced he had inaccurately perceived the question.  Either that or Uncle Poldo’s witticisms were getting much too witty.  “I . . . I dunno.  I just remember waking up on the floor,” answered Milan, “Well, almost on the floor.  I guess I did fall or something . . . but how did I get into the bed?”

That thought launched Milan’s thinking again, but this time flowing out loud.  “Because if I fell out of the bed I had to get into the bed, and I don’t even remember coming here to your house in the first place because I was already in my bed at home, so there was no way I could get into this bed, the one upstairs, and besides how come there is a here anyway, ‘cause there shouldn’t be.  I mean I know you’re here, and there’s all the furniture and other stuff, so it’s all kind of here, but that’s the problem ‘cause it shouldn’t be, ‘cause you moved out ages ago and this house isn’t your house anymore ‘cause someone else lives here now and . . .”  As, again, Milan’s thinking clearly led to no conclusion, he stopped himself, and, again, this brought back the tsunami of emotions.  Tears welled in his eyes.  “What’s happening?”

Kate and Poldo exchanged significant looks with each other.

“I think we have to tell him the truth,” Uncle Poldo said.

“You think he’s ready?”

“I’m not sure that matters.”

“I’m afraid you might be right.  Milan, how’s your vision?” asked Grandma Kate.  “Perhaps it’s a little strange?”

Why is she asking me weird questions?  But then, now that Grandma Kate mentioned it, and he was therefore thinking about it, it was clear that his vision was very strange.  First, there had been the rainbows of sunlight on his arm, and now that he was looking at him, he was sure that Uncle Poldo’s eyes were topaz yellow!  And Grandma Kate’s shimmering blue-green aquamarine!

“Yeah, I guess, yeah it’s kind of . . . weird.” 

“Yes, it’s like that at first, but you’ll get used to it.  How are you feeling . . .” Grandma Kate looked at Milan significantly, “emotionally?”

“I don’t know, I feel . . .” Milan choked up as the tsunami of swirling passions inundated him again.  Was he going to cry or laugh or scream bloody murder or what?  He hated it.  All that agitated churning upset his stomach.

“Do you feel like you’re sensing feelings all around you?”  Grandma Kate asked.

Huh?  “I don’t know, maybe . . . right now I’m just kind of feeling queasy.”

“Of course, dear.  You are sensing all the feelings around you.  It’s a little overwhelming at first, and it might very well make you a little nauseated, but you’ll get used to that too.  You see, dear, and I’m just going to come out and say this because I really don’t know how to prepare you for it, the truth is . . . well, the truth is you’re on what we call the Other Side now.  There you have it.  That’s it.  I’ve said it.  You’re on the Other Side with us.”

What?!  The Other Side?  What other side?  What on earth is Grandma going on about?  Milan’s countenance stared an utterly blank stare.

“Oh dear, I’m so sorry, Milan.  I know this is all very difficult.  I wish I knew how to make it gentle.  Try and take it step-by-step.  This is going to be a whole new world for you.  It is very different from the one you’re used to, so don’t take anything for granted.  We’ll do our best to help you.”

The ground vanished under Milan’s feet, and he knew he’d better not look down because his stomach was already queasy and he hated heights, and right now he suspected he might be suspended above a very deep pit of nothingness.  If he looked, without a doubt, he’d either throw up or fall in.  Good thing he was sitting. 

“Your grandmother is, as usual,” Poldo said significantly, “oversimplifying.   You are now in a reality branch officially designated as øπß5b.  It’s very close to øπß5a, which is the designation of your world, the one you just came from.  So, what exactly do I mean by reality branches?  Well, do you remember when we were discussing the sixteen M-dimensions and uPsi waves that define reality, and how it’s related to consciousness and your personal uPsi wave, and the possible consequences of all of that?”

Why is Uncle Poldo talking about uPsi waves?  And why are he and Grandma zooming away?  Grandma and Poldo were unexpectedly and abruptly distancing themselves and soon were diminutive figures at the far end of a very long table, as if he were looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.  They were so far away he thought he could barely hear their tiny remote voices, but he perfectly understood them anyway.  Milan did sort of remember Uncle Poldo mentioning uPsi waves.   As long as he had known him (Milan was eleven, so it was pretty much his whole life) Uncle Poldo had lectured him on abstruse topics and weird things.  This was on account of Poldo being a physicist, and physicist are supposed to be eccentric and odd and talk about abstruse topics and weird things and so Milan didn’t give it much of a thought, and anyway, he couldn’t really think about any of it because pretty much all of it sailed over his head.

 “Yes, I think maybe I remember . . .”

“So, dear, you must remember,” Grandma Kate explained from afar, “how your Uncle Poldo explained that every reality has a collective unconscious defined by its uPsi wave, and this uPsi wave and your personal uPsi wave must be in harmony.”

“You’re oversimplifying, Kate.  It’s much more complicated than that.”  Poldo’s face rumpled as he frowned at Kate.  Poldo didn’t believe in simplifying arguments for the sake of their comprehension.

“Poldo, Milan doesn’t care about the complicated theory,” Kate said to Poldo, “he just wants to know where he is and why.”  Then she turned to Milan with a kindlier countenance.  “Your Uncle Poldo and I crossed a year ago.  That’s why you thought we moved away.”

“Crossed to where?” asked Milan.  He thought he should maybe shout because they were so far away, so he tried, but instead his voice came out sounding like an indistinct burp.  He hoped they comprehended him anyway.

“To here of course,” Poldo’s voice explained patiently from far away, making it clear he had comprehended Milan’s question, “to the Other Side, which, as I said, is reality øπß5b.  And, as I’ve said, it’s closely related to the reality you just came from, øπß5a.  Now, there are countless realities in the universe, parallel worlds if you prefer, but these two, øπß5a and øπß5b, are unusually closely connected.  Now, even though they are very closely related, meaning the uPsi of here, where you are now, and the uPsi of there, where you came from, are very similar, they are, like all realities, separated by an event horizon, and even though in this case it’s a very weak event horizon, because the two realities are so closely related, and therefore it's not uncommon to cross between the two, event horizons are tricky beasts.  Tricky beasts indeed.  Information, any information, and the concept of what exactly we mean by ‘information’ is a very interesting topic much too broad to go into now, but the important point is that information cannot cross an event horizon . . .”

“Poldo,” Kate’s faraway voice tried to interrupt but without success.

“…at least not under normal circumstances,” Poldo continued his serious explaining, “and what I mean by ‘normal’ is also a very interesting question, but we’d best leave that, too, for another time.  However, what is relevant to your situation is the question of how does one manage to cross an event horizon?  Basically, it has to do with your brain’s uPsi wave and its relationship to the uPsi wave of the collective unconscious of your reality—they must be in fundamental harmony with each other.  It’s a dynamic harmony, meaning it’s constantly changing and evolving, but if the uPsi waves are not in fundamental harmony, a disturbance in the wave interference patterns occurs, which, if it’s consistent and consequential, leads to disturbances within the quantum probability fields of the event horizon, which in turn can allow you to slip through that event horizon.  But before we go into more detail, it’s important to understand a key concept, which has to do with choice and free will.  You see, given any choice you make, when you make that choice, it means that your mind has literally altered certain aspects of your reality, which may sound worrying but it’s actually a very natural everyday occurrence and doesn’t lead to any instabilities in the probability fields unless. . .”

“Poldo,” Kate finally managed to successfully butt in and rescue Milan, “I’m not sure Milan needs all those theoretical details right now.”

“Of course he does!”

“The point is, dear,” Grandma Kate ignored Poldo and spoke to Milan, “that your uPsi wave was more in harmony with the uPsi wave here than with the one of your world, so you crossed and here you are.” 

“Huh?” was all Milan could think of.

“Dear, we suspect this is basically due to your very vivid imagination,” Grandma Kate’s voice had an affectionate quality, and as a result she was suddenly her own size and sitting softly next to Milan.  He wondered if she noticed.

“This is because,” Poldo lectured again, still miles away, “this world, reality øπß5b, favours creative people, people with a vivid imagination.  As I was saying, on the most elementary level, quantum probabilities collapse when a choice is made.  This is because when you make a choice, any choice, and of course we must be very careful in how we define ‘choice’, but that too is a complicated topic we should save for another time, but for now, any time you make a choice, say you chose ‘a’ over ‘b’, it means that you have, in essence, willed the universe into state ‘a’ and . . .”

A slack-jawed Milan sat glassy-eyed and uncomprehending.

“I’m sorry dear, but none of this is easy to explain.”  Granmdma Kate was still soothingly sitting next to Milan and not minding Poldo’s irritated-at-being- interrupted-again puckered brow at the far end of the long table.

“Can I go home?”  Milan asked.  He noticed that the kitchen was expanding and contracting within itself, all at once.

“Darling, the truth is, we don’t know, we really don’t.”  Grandma Kate’s voice wasn’t reassuring.  It seemed hollow and everywhere, like maybe it came on a tumbleweed-blowing dry desert wind, but there wasn’t one.

“You mean I might never see my mother again?”  Tears swelled in Milan’s eyes and his tangled swirling emotions turned a very deep dark blue as the significance of the situation he was situated in began to sink in.

“Again, dear, we don’t know,” Grandma Kate said hugging Milan tight in sympathy.  Milan basked in the warmth of his grandmother’s love and the kitchen table shrunk back to the size it always had been, and she and Uncle Poldo were now both right there next to him, sitting where they should have always been.  “For all we know this is a temporary glitch and you may wake up at home tomorrow and never see us again.”

“But,” Milan said worriedly, “I may still wake up here.”

Not knowing, Grandma Kate and Uncle Poldo agreed and shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders and Milan’s spirits again plunged into deep bottomless blue and he burst out crying.  He felt dizzy.  He was sure the world had dissolved, and he was afraid that again there was no floor beneath him, but this time he looked down to see and there was no floor, and instead there was a deep pitch-dark abyss, and its deep depth spun him in a nauseatingly whirling vertigo.  Milan closed his eyes and Grandma Kate held him tight with her lips pressed against his forehead and for a moment said nothing.

“Would you like to come outside and meet this world?” she eventually asked hopefully optimistic.  “You should meet our neighbor, Lucinda.  Her niece Alessa is visiting from Florence.  Lovely girl . . . about your age . . . she visits quite often.  I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”

Milan slowly opened his eyes.  There was a floor beneath his feet again, but he wasn’t so sure he wanted to see more, thinking that maybe if he could just crawl back into bed and fall asleep, he’d wake up at home and all this would go away.

“Don’t be silly, dear.  I know it’s emotionally very difficult, but you really must make an effort.  And I’m sure you and Alessa will get along splendidly.”

Did she know what I was thinking?

“Ooh, I’ve seen you, I have.” Lucinda’s deep-set violet gaze flashed from behind extraordinary dark heavy makeup and false eyelashes.  “We’ve never met, but I’ve seen you there on your little dream visits.”  A long finger with a long nail glittering amaranthine pointed at Milan and probably also at Grandma Kate’s house.  “And so you’ve crossed now?  My, my, it must be quite a shock.”  She towered above Milan dramatically arranged in a magnificent pose underneath a mess of grey hair gathered up in an asymmetric twist atop her head.  Stray dreadlocks fell freely onto an exquisitely well-used amethyst robe that matched her dangerously intense, wickedly delightful violet eyes, a robe dazzling and perfect in both form and detailing.  

Milan stood motionless in Poldo’s oversized coat and hat (borrowed on account of the cold) and impolitely stared open-mouthed stunned and spellbound.  He had never met anyone quite like Lucinda.  The thought that she knew what he’d dreamt about was unsettling—how she could possibly know given that they’d never met?  But she was strikingly beautiful and enchanting and witchy, and he willingly fell under her spell.  Where’s her broom? flashed through his mind.

“Don’t be silly,” Lucinda said.

Again!  It happened again!  Did she know what I was thinking?

“I know you’re confused and frightened and worried.  Of course it’s difficult,” Lucinda’s mellifluous voice counseled Milan directly inside his soul.  “It’s always difficult at first, especially the first few days.” her violet eyes smiled encouragement. “But there are always exceptions.  You know, Alessa has a dear, dear friend, who when she arrived didn’t really notice that . . .”

Lucinda’s violet eyes and rhythmic poetic cadence mesmerized Milan as he listened to her voice, delightful, enthralling, and melodic.  He found himself hopelessly lost in a warm hazy place, her words turned into a murmur of ambient sounds, like a soothing breeze, or a burbling brook, or buzzing insects on a velvet sun-kissed summer afternoon.  He lost track of what she was saying, but it didn’t matter, it all made perfect sense anyway.  He was transfixed, drowsy and happy.  They must have been walking because they stopped and Milan noticed he was now somewhere else.  And then he noticed that Lucinda had stopped speaking and instead there were sounds of clucking and chirping.  And then after that, he noticed a gentle breeze of fresh wintry air.  And there was space again, space all around him, space because he fell out of his mind and back into a world that had suddenly returned.

This must be her backyard, figured Milan, thinking logically because it looked like a backyard.  There was a sunny lightness in the chilly air.

“Oh, hullo!” another voice said, hypnotic like soft waves, like Lucinda’s voice, but younger.  It belonged to a girl with long midnight blue hair that kept falling into her face, and Milan felt like she’d always been around, that he’d always known her.  He watched mesmerized as she impatiently swept her hair out of the way, placed corn seed into a little container with little coloured buttons on top, and then affixed the container to the side of a wire-mesh coop.  Coops were stacked up, fashioned into a high-rise.  Implausibly placed on top of this unlikely construction was a vidScreen flashing colours with no discernible purpose or pattern.  Clucking hens milled all around on the snow-dusted grass and occasionally gazed with focused awareness at the vidScreen.

“I was about to load the hens.  You can help if you want.  You’re Milan, right?” Alessa asked with an enchanting smile and a faint Italian accent, indisputably radiating the lightness Milan felt inside.  She lifted emerald green eyes in greeting and just barely tilted her little nymph-like face with a delicately pointed chin.  “I’m Alessa, by the way.  I’ve been expecting you.  I’m so very pleased to meet you. Your grandmother has spoken of you so often.  You’ve likely never heard of me, but I know all about you.  So, how are you coping with your new surrounding?”

Lightness turned heavy and cold and Milan was stabbed with a deep pain.  Home!  Would he ever see it again?  He tried to hide his tears with a halfhearted smile.

“I’m so sorry.”  There was something so deeply genuine about Alessa that radiating lightness flooded back with her words.

Why are these chickens staring at the vidScreen? was Milan’s next thought.

“You’ll soon see what this is all about.”

Damn!  They really do know what I’m thinking around here.

“Come!  I’ll show you.”

Alessa took Milan’s hand and warmth and peace and a deep, clear calm that had always been there flooded his soul.

I’m tired of going up and down, up and down.  This really sucks!

Alessa ignored the thought.

“See the buttons?”  She pointed to the coloured buttons.  “When a hen pecks one it gets a corn, but at the same time it also makes a letter, depending on the button it choses.  After the right number of pecks a spell check runs through the letters and decides on a word, and it then shows up on that vidScreen.”  Alessa pointed at it.  “Got it?”

Milan stared dumbfounded, not comprehending anything Alessa had just explained or why anyone would go through all this trouble on account of chickens, but her hand felt warm and safe and reassuring.

“Lucinda sometimes tries to conduct them.”

“Conduct the chickens?”

“Don’t be silly.”  Lucinda unexpectedly stood behind them perfectly postured in bearing and attitude.  Shining trails sparkled and shimmered in the air as her dancing hand flashed glittering amaranthine fingernails.  “I conduct, but of course not totally conduct.  There remains a lot of room for the chickens to choose, and for chance.  But then, can’t art exploit the unexpected, the accident?”

Milan’s bafflement was clear on his countenance.

“Help me load the hens and you will see for yourself.”  Alessa said as she picked up a hen and gingerly placed it into one of the coops.  “See, like this.”

Milan tentatively grabbed a hen (for the first time in his life) and carefully brought it to a coop.  Without warning, the hen exploded into flapping wings, flying feathers and a furiously pecking beak.

“Ow!  That hurts!”  Milan yelped and immediately dropped the bird.

“Well, you can’t blame her, can you?” Alessa said, “you were trying to put her into the wrong coop.  They each have their own.”

“But…but, how am I supposed to know which is the right one?”

“They’ll let you know.  When you pick one up, follow it.”

“How can I follow a hen if I pick it up and it is in my hands?”

“Oh Milan, you think too much,” Lucinda said.  “You simply must learn to let go and feel.”

What is she talking about?  These are chickens!

“Is everybody ready?”

The chickens were sitting and waiting, each one in its own coop.  Alessa instinctively brushed blue hair away from her face and importantly flipped a switch under the vidScreen.  A fanfare of trumpets sounded the signal upon which the chickens immediately began to peck at the buttons.  Words began to shuffle and spin on the vidScreen like some old TV game show with a refrigerator for the prize.  Soon the kernels had all been consumed, the pecking stopped, the spinning stopped, and the words froze.  Another trumpet fanfare sounded.  Milan read the vidScreen:

X-ray vision windowsill.

Rain falls from the sky.

Five spell.

Here can I say?

Beans climb to great affinity.

One artichoke to go between.

Six dogs bark.

But maybe not.

Click clack.

Click clack.

“Fabulous!  Absolutely fabulous!” Lucinda with clapping hands streaming glittering amaranthine trails proclaimed.  “I love the serendipity, the wordplay.  It speaks of Life and Karma and Destiny.  I think that must have been in honour of you, Milan!”

Alessa began releasing the chickens from their coops.  Milan did not want to offend his hostess, but he was powerless to conceal the blank open-mouthed bewilderment expressed on his face as he stood there in Podo’s oversized coat and hat.

“In time you will understand,” Lucinda proclaimed melodramatically and with a theatrical flourish sent her scarf soaring in the air.  Milan bent to where it softly landed on a little spot of snow and dutifully picked it up.  There, where it hadn’t been before the scarf covered where it now was, stood a perfectly lovely mouth-watering delicious-looking egg.  Milan, excited and already thinking of all the egg dishes he knew, reached for it, but immediately, before he could grab it, an army of chickens configured themselves into a military battle formation and threateningly surrounded him.  Milan quickly pulled his hand back as their seriously martial demeanor made it clear the egg was not to be touched.

“Milan, these are not mere farm animals.  These are poets!”  Lucinda stood theatrically aghast and scandalized.

“But, but one of them laid an egg . . .”

“We all lay an egg occasionally.  You can’t fault a hen for that.” 

Milan felt tingly, as the ground under his feet turned onto itself.

“Don’t mind her,” Alessa whispered in his ear.  “How were you supposed to know?”  Her soft warmth radiated light that comforted and grounded.

“Would you like to come with me to the forest?” asked Alessa.  “I have to pick mushrooms.”

Milan’s visage noticeably displayed an expression of bewilderment.

“For tomorrow’s market, silly!” Alessa answered without really explaining.

Milan noticed that Grandma’s house here on the Other Side was also on Willowleaf Lane, just like her house on the…Milan had no idea what to call the side he came from, which maybe was now the Other Side because he was no longer standing there and was instead standing here and so maybe this was no longer the Other Side but instead it was now This Side, or something like  that, and he’d forgotten the fancy terms Poldo had used (he remembered the 5a and 5b parts) but thinking about it was too complicated and it was too confusing to decide, so he gave up.  Everything here on this Willowleaf Lane looked very much like everything there on that, other, Willowlwaf Lane.  The eccentric little cubist houses here were the same as the quirky ones his memory was sure it remembered there.   The peculiar little streetlamps were the same too.  But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something funny . . . something off, something different.  Yes, the dusting of snow glittered in brilliant rainbow sparkles.  And things that weren’t so far away seemed closer than they should be, and if they weren’t so close, then they were far away.  But he was slowly adjusting to that.  It was something else.  But what?  Maybe the best way to put it was that it was quaint here, almost old-fashioned.  Everything felt more village, less suburb.  The carefully laid out lawns and flowerbeds and paved paths of the White Hill Park he knew were meadow and forest and unpaved trails instead.  It was like he was in a different century, but it couldn’t be in the past because they had spell check and vidScreens.

Then unexpectedly it all became clear, as if a translucent veil was suddenly lifted to reveal the scenery it had been cloaking in plain sight.  It’s the quiet!   That’s it.  It’s quiet!  It abruptly hit Milan that there was no hubbub.  The din of honking cars, rattling trucks, buses, emergency vehicle sirens, the sound of airplanes overhead—all absent.  The incessant cacophony of the modern world wasn’t.  There was a stillness broken only by their faintly sounding footsteps on the thin blanket of snow, by wintry breezes, by the distant cawing of flocking crows.

“Mushrooms need to breathe,” Alessa explained as she pranced lightly up the hill in White Hill Park like a little wood nymph.  “You must never put them in plastic or in anything that can’t get air.  That’s why we use baskets.”

Milan was a bit on the plumpy side so he didn’t do prancing and lightness.  He huffed and puffed hard and plodded along trying to keep up.  “I didn’t realize that there were mushrooms in the winter,” Milan panted as he tried to catch his breath and imagine how they were going to find anything under all the snow, which grew deeper as they headed uphill.

“We’re looking for winter mushrooms, silly.  They’re called winter mushrooms because they grow in the winter.  Don’t you have those?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.  I don’t really know that much about mushrooms.”  Milan knew pretty much exactly nothing about mushrooms. 

“The ones we are most likely to find kind of look like jellyfish.   They’re clear with totally beautiful patterns or stripes, depending on the variety,” Alessa explained.  “They’re delicious, but you must know what you’re picking.  There is a poisonous one that looks similar, but it grows out of a bulb at the stem.  You must be careful because the wrong mushroom can kill you.”

“I know that.  Is it worth it?”

“Picking them?  Of course, if you know your mushrooms.  Don’t you pick mushrooms in your world?”

“Why?  They sell them in the store.”

“It’s not the same if you buy them.  They’re different if they don’t grow outdoors and . . .found one!”  Alessa cried and stopped suddenly and pointed.  “Ooh, it’s a Zimní Zebra!”

Rising out of a little crater in the snow was the most amazing mushroom Milan had ever seen.  It looked like blown glass with glowing phosphorescent stripes that ran up the stem, and radiated on the cap, and changed colour depending on how you looked. 

Funny, I could have sworn I looked at that very spot and there was nothing there. 

“You don’t see it, until you see it,” Alessa explained.

Well, duh.  But, how did she know . . . ?  Okay, right, I should be used to it by now.

“That’s the funny thing about mushrooms. You can look right at one, but it takes a moment for your brain to register that it’s there.  It hides in plain sight!  You can learn a lot from mushrooms.”  Quietly serious and with subdued deference, Alessa spoke reverently.  “They’re almost like a religion in this country.”

What?  Mushrooms?  “You mean the mushroom is sacred?”

“No, not really.  It’s more like a symbol.  You see, the actual mushroom is only the fruiting part of this thing called the mycelium, which is really huge and grows underground.”

“Oh.”  Milan wasn’t sure he was that interested in the details of the life of a mushroom.

“Milan, it’s the metaphor that’s interesting.”

Damn, they always know.

“People are like mushrooms; we look separate but if you look deeper, we are all connected.  You can call it God, or the Great Spirit, or the Absolute, or whatever you want.  There are many names for it.  That is why we can feel each other, because we are all connected.”

“Is that why you can read my thoughts?”

“I’m not reading your thoughts, Milan,” Alessa said with a wink and a smile, “I just feel your aura.  You will too, once you let go.”

Milan wasn’t feeling auras, but he was feeling emotions.  Since he had found himself on his bottom on the rug on the floor next to the bed there had been too many emotions, way too many, and they all ended up in that miserable nauseating mix of every emotion he’d ever known, up and down and round and round.  Even when his father died, it hadn’t felt so painful and raw.

“Ooh, I found one!”  Milan pounced on the mushroom and proudly showed it to Alessa.

“Very good!  That’s a beauty.”

“And another!”

“No, that one’s not the same.  See the how the cap dips down at the edge?  And here, under the cap there’s a ring.  This one isn’t going to kill you or anything, but it could make you pretty sick to your stomach.”  Alessa seemed to enjoy professorially lecturing Milan.

 The path they were following came to a steep hollow and veered downward and ended at a frozen brook.  The sheer banks shimmered with luminous mushrooms pushing their caps through rainbow diamond snow. 

“This is so fuKool!  It’s like a holoFlick winter wonderland or something!” exclaimed Milan, genuinely taken by the sheer fairy-tale beauty of the little ravine but lacking the proper poetry to express himself.

“Look at these!” Alessa pointed at a tree trunk covered with wavy luminous crystalline petals.   “These are tree mushrooms.  We call them Crystal Ears.  They taste great!”  

They filled their baskets as they walked along the bank of the brook.  Milan tried to pay attention and learn what he could, but mostly he was just happy to be in the company of Alessa and her warm glow.  Her voice mesmerized him like Lucinda’s but never seduced him away from where he was.

“Oh oh, that looks like a snowstorm coming!”  Alessa stopped with furrowed brow and looked worriedly at the sky.  There was more than a hint of concern in her green eyes.

“What?  A snowstorm?  How can you tell?”

Alessa pointed at clouds that were rapidly forming in strange patterns.  Milan had seen similar winter patterns, but they had been small and frozen on windowpanes, not huge and in the sky.  This was vast and bizarre and seemed to hint at something bad, but it was incredibly beautiful.  Chromatic lightning flashed between sharp frost-pattern clouds like a SIMtreatment in a club on a really happening night, and it was all moving in their direction.

“Milan, we’d better go.  Now!”

They scurried back along the brook and up out of the little hollow as the storm approached.  It gathered intensity as they started off downhill, and as it did it began swallowing up light.  Their baskets were full, and they had to be careful not to spill mushrooms as they hurried down the hill in the gathering gloom.  Milan was wearing street shoes and tried to pretend it wasn’t a problem, but it was, and his heel slipped out from underneath him, and he landed hard.  Ow!!  Mushrooms tumbled out of his basket as his bottom slid downhill like a toboggan.

“Milan, are you okay?”  With weightless leaps Alessa followed Milan and when his bottom stopped its downhill sliding, she offered him her hand.  “We must hurry!”  Frantically she salvaged what mushrooms she could.

“I think I’ve got most of them, Milan.  Can you still run?”

Milan nodded.  They set off at a jog, Alessa like a sprite gliding lightly while Milan plodded after her panting in the crisp air.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a huge ear-splitting silence that rumbled across the sky.  It was a peal of stabbing silence so hushed that it felt as if it had blown out his eardrums, not with noise, but with sound sucking quiet.  There was a split-second delay and lightning followed, an all-consuming, flash of light so intensely bright that it erased everything.  Noiseless thunder before lightning!  In the split-second of white nothingness Milan could have sworn he saw an appearance, a face, a disturbing face whose presence was familiar yet malevolent.

“Milan! Milan!  Don’t be afraid!” Alessa warned after the blinding flash passed and she and the world returned, but now enveloped in a blinding blizzard.  “It’s only a thunderstorm but your fear will only make it worse!”

Through a haze of panic and white-out snow, Milan was barely able to piece together what Alessa was shouting at him.  It was impossible to hear anything, it was impossible to see anything.  He thought he could make out Alessa’s blue hair whipping in the snow, but another flash of lightning erased everything again.  Her voice was distant and unclear in the howling wind and would disappear entirely at times within the unbridled fury of the silences that preceded the thunder.  Terror gripped him.  He couldn’t move.  Where was he?  And what was that creepy face he had just seen? 

Don’t fight it!

Somewhere within the uncontrolled rage that the world had become, Milan thought he heard Alessa.

“Milan, don’t fight it!”

Milan didn’t remember much of the desperate trek back except for stinging windblown snow, deafening thunderclaps of silence and blinding flashes of lightning.  And the face he couldn’t get it out of his mind.  It tumbled in his head twisting his mind, stabbing it with shards of fear. 

They heaved, struggling backs pressed hard against the door, until finally it slammed shut and the terrifying nightmare vanished.  They were in Grandma Kate’s house on Willowleaf Lane.

Milan, disoriented, panting hard and still leaning on the door, slid down, and kept sliding. It was a long, long slide.  The floor avoided him as long as it could until it couldn’t anymore, and then it hit his bottom.  Milan sat there, eyes closed, holding his knees close to his chest and shivering.  His only awareness was that of an emerald presence somewhere deep hidden from his conscious mind.  He slowly opened his eyes, and the emerald presence morphed into Alessa’s eyes, which were probing him, searching deep.

“Did it get in?” Alessa asked.

“What?”

“Did it get in?” Alessa repeated, kneeling in front of Milan.

“What did?”

“Is there one inside of you?”

“One what?  What are you talking about?”

Grandma Kate came up and stood next to Alessa, concerned.  “What is it?”

“Milan was fighting the storm,” Alessa explained worried.  “I just want to make sure it didn’t get inside.”

“A lower astral?”  Kate sounded worried.  She knelt next to Alessa and they both examined Milan, slipping in through his eyes, crisscrossing his awareness, ice-sharp emerald and aquamarine laser searchlights piercing a pitch-black mind.

“I don’t see anything,” Kate said, “do you?”

Alessa leaned in so close to Milan that they touched noses.  Milan, what did you see?

Alessa’a calm emerald expanded within Milan, filling his awareness, his body, washing through his veins, beating in his heart, suffusing his soul in fragrant dreamy green summer afternoons.  Then, ZAP!  A nasty ice-electric shock freeze-burned his mind.  It’s still here!  The white nothingness, that face!  It’s still here!  All the green warmth vanished in a nanosecond. 

Milan, that is a dark astral turning you against yourself.  Do you understand?

Milan nodded because he heard but he had no idea what Alessa was saying inside his head.

Milan, let it go!  Let everything go and come to my light!

Milan tried to let go, but let go of what?  He vaguely remembered where he was, which was sitting leaning on the door with bottom on the floor with a strange girl with blue hair and emerald eyes inside his head telling him something of the storm was in his head, which made no sense, because how can a storm get in your head?  And Grandma Kate was there but shouldn’t be because she now lived overseas, and then there were the glowing mushrooms, and thunder that was silence, and everyone knew what you were thinking, and, well, nothing made any sense at all.

This is a dream.

“Milan, you fell asleep with your eyeVid on!”

One second Milan was staring at the creepy face in the whiteout and the next he was looking at his mother holding his eyeVid, his bottom still flat on the floor but now on the rug next to his bed in his room.

“Milan, I wish you didn’t play SIMgames at bedtime.”

“Huh?”

So it was all a SIMgame!  At first Milan felt deep relief at the explanation.  He was back at home with his mother, here on This Side—or whatever it was called—the side he was meant to be on.  But if it’s a SIMgame, which one?   Milan had never heard of a simulated reality game featuring an Other Side (and he knew pretty much every SIMgame out there).  And even if this one was a game he’d never heard of, why would it feature his grandmother’s house on Willowleaf Lane?  That made no sense.  And it hadn’t felt like a game.  It felt way too real.  It had to have been in Real.  But then, could a girl with blue hair and emerald eyes poking around in his mind be real?  Or sunlight that sparkled in rainbows?  Glowing winter mushrooms?  Storms that had creepy-faced lower astrals that got into your head?  Thunder that was silent?  Everyone aware of what you’re thinking?  Every emotion it’s possible to have running amok all at once?  And chicken poetry?  Real?  Seriously?

So, maybe I fell asleep playing a SIMgame and it was a dream all along!

Milan again felt deep relief at the explanation.  Finally this one made sense!  But then, as he relaxed and began perceiving the world again in a more normal fashion, he felt something his hand was holding.  He opened it and there, in his palm, was a beautiful mushroom stem that looked exactly like blown glass.

“Milan, what is that?” his mother asked.